In a move that reflects a continued commitment to providing the highest standard of patient safety, Provena Covenant Medical Center has implemented a new “smart pump” technology that will help reduce medication errors during the administration of intravenous (IV) medications.

The Smart IV pump, which went into effect August 27 after all nurses were trained, will act as an assistant to nurses and clinicians that administer IV medications at the point of care. As a health-care provider enters dosage and infusion rate information into the system, the software accesses the health system’s drug library and compares the order against a preset standard for minimum and maximum doses. Anything above or below the pre-established limits will result in an alert to the clinician.

"Provena Covenant is committed to providing quality care for our patients, and this technology has proven to reduce the chance of human error," states Diane E. Genthner, Chief Nurse Executive for Provena Covenant. "Any preventable error is an error we don’t want any of our patients to experience."

The new smart pump technology acts as a "safety net" for nurses at the bedside and also provides continuous quality improvement data. The data generated allows Provena to track programming errors or "near misses" that have been averted and could have resulted in patient harm. Data can then be analyzed to determine what caused specific opportunities for improvement.

Provena Health was recently named one of the Top 50 Health Systems in the U.S. based on hospital clinical quality and efficiency, according to a new study released by Thomson Reuters.

Using an in-depth exploration of five quality indicators composed of risk-adjusted mortality, complications, patient safety, Joint Commission Core Measures performance, and average length of stay, the report found that systems like Provena deploy key strategies to drive high quality of

For more information on Provena’s Top 50 designation, please visit www.provena.org/covenant/top50.