Tuesday, March 29, 2016

DUR Overrides

"I have three overrides for you," Flynn the tech spits out.

The first one is alerting me to the fact that yes indeed, the patient did get Simvastatin about 30 days ago (and has been getting the same medication for over a year). 

The computer wants a pharmacist to make sure its all ok.

The second one is alerting me to the fact that we had to switch one generic for another because our supplier is sending us a new generic for Zolpidem. Oh, the patient has had both generics before a number of times... but...

The computer wants a pharmacist to make sure its all ok.

The third override involves a day supply issue for a birth control. The computer has in it's programming that all birth control is for 28 days, yet this birth control is one of those 21 day formulations.

The computer wants a pharmacist to make sure its all ok.

I'm flattered the computer thinks I'm so smart, but this is just the start. The overrides will continue, ad nauseum, all day long. On rare occasion, maybe ONCE a day, the override will involve something that's actually important.

Pharmacists are buried in nonsense overrides. It disrupts the flow of everything and is actually a hindrance. If everything requires an override... then nothing does, really.



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What's sick is that its such a commonly accepted phenomenon that it has a name.

Alert Fatigue.

Maybe corporate can 'leverage' some of their 'synergies' to 'innovate' 'logistics' to 'organically' grow the business to pick the 'low-hanging-fruit' of 'mission critical' 'profit centers' so all of us pharmacists can 'add value' to a 'sustainable' business practice our 'stakeholders' demanded on our last 'deep dive.'

Yes, I was on a conference call today. What are you, psychic? And no, I lost the latest round of corporate b.s. bingo.

Kassy said...

Same happens on the physician side. My EMR actually alerts me that lotrel interacts with lotrel as combining hypertension agents could cause low blood pressure.