If a clinician removes a medication from a Med Dispensing Cabinet (such as a Pyxis or OmniCell machine), the clinician should always match the medication to the correct patient using the correct Visit Number and patient Medical Record Number (MRN.)
However, in an emergent situation, it is possible that a medication may be removed from the Med Dispensing Cabinet before the correct patient data has been entered. Upon removal, a user may have entered an incorrect patient name, visit number or MRN, in order to pull an Override Medication from the Med Dispensing Cabinet. This has the potential to result in duplicate patients being created in the NextGen® Pharmacy (NGRx) application, leading to medication charges incorrectly applied to patient accounts.
To prevent this from occurring, NGRx will place a constraint into the system which will “block” invalid patient data from crossing from the cabinet into the NGRx application. Medications that are not matched on a patient MRN will be blocked, once the constraint is applied to the region. However, the clinician will still have the ability to “pull” Override Medications from the Med Dispensing Cabinet in an emergent situation, by using the Automated System Override Function, available on all Med Dispensing Cabinets.
Please refer to your specific Med Dispensing Cabinet recommendations for more information on accessing the available override options.
After using the override function and the medication has been administered, the user should contact the Pharmacy staff and/or an NGRx system administrator to ensure the medication is submitted to the correct patient’s chart and billed correctly. This should occur immediately for all facilities.
The hospital should establish a procedure to ensure all medications that are removed, using the override function, are properly recorded and charged to the patient in a timely fashion.