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WASHINGTON - Almost all medications given in the hospital soon must bear a supermarket-style bar code that health workers can match to patients to help ensure they get the right dose of the right drug at the right time.
The code, just an eighth of an inch tall on individual pill packs, is a major new requirement for manufacturers. The Food and Drug Administration says the requirement could cut in half the drug errors now thought to kill about 7,000 hospitalized patients a year.
Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson announced the regulation Wednesday.When patients are admitted to a hospital that uses a bar code system, they are given a wristband with their identifying code. After the wristband and the intended medicine are scanned, if the drug does not match the patient's medical chart, a computer beeps an alarm.
Errors plummeted when veterans hospitals adopted bar codes several years ago, relabeling their in-house drugs for electronic identification.
But as of December, only about 125 of the nation's 5,000-plus hospitals were using bar code systems, according to Bridge Medical Inc., a leading manufacturer of bar code readers. That is partly because only about 35 percent of their pharmaceutical supplies came with the codes affixed to them.
The government's new rule means more hospitals probably will start using the safety system because virtually all the prescription drugs and most over-the-counter medicines that they administer - including blood products and vaccines - will arrive with a bar code. But hospitals won't be required to use the codes.
Nursing homes likely will use the systems, too.