In October 2014, North York General Hospital (NYGH) became the first hospital in Canada to implement RFID technology for kit checking. NYGH selected and deployed the Intelliguard® Kit and Tray Management System from MEPS Real-Time, Inc. with a goal to improve the speed and accuracy of processing high-density procedural and emergency kits and trays.
North York General Hospital (NYGH) is one of Canada's leading community academic hospitals with 426 acute beds and 192 long-term care beds. They offer culturally diverse community, a wide range of acute care, ambulatory and long-term care services across three sites.
NYGH and its satellite pharmacy at the Branson Ambulatory Care Centre converted more than 150 medication trays to the Intelliguard® Kit and Tray Management System.
Brett Ruffell, Associate Editor at Rogers Healthcare Group, visited the hospital to learn more, documenting what he found in a video for the Canadian Healthcare Network's Pharmacy Practice + newsletter.
(Unfortunately, the video is no longer available for viewing.)
Quality Study Validates Impact of the Intelliguard® Kit and Tray Management System on Accuracy and Efficiency
Since the installation, MEPS® and NYGH conducted a quality study to validate the impact of the Intelliguard® Kit and Tray Management System on accuracy and efficiency.
The study confirmed the hospital’s pharmacy technicians achieved perfect accuracy when using the Intelliguard® System – meaning there were no missing, expired or recalled drugs in the trays. Extrapolating from the documented error rates of the non-automated process, the study further concluded a minimum of 2,664 trays errors will be eradicated annually.
The study results further confirmed efficiency metrics, documenting time savings for a large majority of trays processed using the automated process. The time savings in 12 out of 16 study tray runs ranged from two to nearly 14 minutes. Time savings observed varies proportionally to number of items in each tray type. Average time savings per tray equaled 4.9 minutes (totaling a 79 minute savings in 16 study tray runs).
Edith Rolko, Director of Pharmacy and Infection Prevention at NYGH presided over a poster session at the Canadian Society of Hospital Pharmacists’ 41st Annual Banff Seminar in Alberta, Canada, outlining the full results of the study.
You can view her poster presentation here:
(Click on the image to download a pdf of the poster.)
A downloadable version of the Quality Study North York General Hospital (NYGH) and the Impact of the Intelliguard® Kit and Tray Management System on Medication Kit Checking Efficiency and Accuracy is also available for download.
>> Download 
A Study By North York General Hospital (199.42 KB)
