A 4 Billion Dollar Mistake

None of were happy about having a new medical administration record (MAR) forced upon us. But then, most people don't like change. I figured that eventually we would all adjust.

The new computerized system cost 4 billion dollars. That seems like a lot of money to fix something that wasn't broken, but I'm just a lowly nurse. What do I know?

With a system this complicated, there were bound to be problems. I figured that after a week or so, the bugs would be worked out of the system. Who knew that I was such an optimist?

It has been several weeks and it's hard to say who hates the system more, the pharmacists or the nurses. The pharmacists now spend their entire shift sitting in front of a computer transcribing doctor's orders. They keep getting so far behind that it is taking 4 to 6 hours to get the MAR's and meds delivered to the nurses. The MAR's are also filled with mistakes for virtually every patient. The nurses now spend a large part of their shift looking for and correcting mistakes, but still, mistakes are slipping through the cracks. Whoever designed the program didn't make it pharmacist friendly. It shouldn't be that hard to enter in data.

The nurses hate the new system because, besides all of the mistakes and delays, it is hard to read the MAR. The order in which the drugs are listed is stupid and the common or brand names for the drugs are rarely listed. If a patient has only routine orders, the MAR will be 8 pages long. If a patient is actually sick, the pages may double. And instead of just giving us what we need to know, there will be a paragraph or two of fluff that we have to sort through for each drug. I thought that with time my eyes would adjust and the words I was looking for would just jump out at me. But it's not happening, I have to read everything. It's wasting our time and mistakes are being made.

We would all love to declare the new system a failure and go back to the old system, but who wants to admit that they made a 4 billion dollar mistake? No one in charge does, so we're stuck with a system that doesn't work.