Medication Bar Coding:
To Scan or Not to Scan?
Mical Milfort and Alice Merelus
Oakwood University

Introduction Bar codes seem to be everywhere in modern society and hospitals are no exception. Approximately every year, 1.5 million Americans are injured because of medication errors (Foote and Coleman, 2008). This situation alone shows that a new system needs to be put into practice. When you look at it, the main goal for barcoding is to reduce medication errors. The question still lies does scanning really prevent errors, or does it really make a difference? And before that can be said, one must research. In order to analyze the Bar Coding system we must first know what it is and how it works. The bar code medication administration system is very inexpensive; it cost about $7,100 per medication cart (Foote and Coleman, 2008). The bar coding system is an integrated software system that combines Bluetooth wireless technology with a hand-held bar code scanner. The patient medication doses are then bar-coded and tracked as the medication goes back and forth between the nurses, pharmacy and patients. Then, a bar code is affixed to an item; each bar code represents a unique combination of bars and spaces which, when read by the bar-code scanner, corresponds to information stored in a database. The bar code is then affixed to patients' wrist bands and the database contains information relevant to patient care. When the pharmacist receives a prescription for which ever patient, they put a code