[Revised Apr 05]
Safety of dispensing (and claiming)
With many pharmacists on our staff, safety is a high priority and no effort has been spared in making the RxOne dispensing and claiming processes highly dependable. There are many internal checks, most of which are invisible to the user. Audits of 'RxOne' by certifying authorities in different countries have not only approved the methods used, but usually comment on the high level of accuracy assurance.
Examples include;
Double entry book-keeping on claims. At time of dispensing every script item (whether NHS or Private) is listed for claiming and assigned a serial number for the claim. On making up the claim, the system puts all items in the failed list, and retrieves them one at a time putting them into the claimed list or don't claim (Private) list only if they pass every check. Thus any failure will result in the script being shown as failed rather than just being dropped. Further, the system ticks off the serial numbers, knowing that it must find all 1200 items between item 0001 for the month and item 1200 for the month, so will know if an item can't be recalled. Because of this it is very unlikely that an item will be dropped due to technical error, and equally importantly unlikely that it will double claim or fraudulently claim an item. If RxOne doesn't claim an item, you can be sure there will be a very good reason why not (and you will be told).
Internal linkage error prevention. Databases are reliable, usually having less than one undetected bad linkage in a million items. However, there are around 150m scripts a year dispensed in Australia, so if all computer systems have a one in a million error rate then there could be up to 150 undetected linkage errors a year… not acceptable. To guard against this, RxOne has an extra set of redundant checks that take the theoretical rate down to 1 in a trillion (10 power 12). At this level RxOne will probably make one undetected error from this cause in 33,000 years, much more acceptable.
Pharmacist typo errors in the patient instruction. The last sig is displayed alongside the sig box for you to check, and if it is the same you can enter <s> to have it copied without error. Or you can re-enter if you prefer. Typo errors are always a risk when busy, so anything that can reduce them is significant.
Power cuts. RxOne writes almost everything twice, once directly to the database and again onto a separate file to allow roll forward recovery automatically if the database gets corrupted. From tracking support calls we now know that RxOne is as robust as QuickScript was… it is rare for a Windows program to be as robust as its DOS predecessor. (What price progress?).
"Are you sure?" checks? Notwithstanding the above, we try to keep these to the minimum. While they do satisfy the lawyers, any check which is answered more than 95% the same way gets answered by the mental motor sets in the human brain without conscious thought. Instead the system carries out checks of its own, and being a computer it does not get tired of doing this and say yes automatically like a person does.
Reliable computer use does not come from asking the operator the same questions time after time, but by having the computer consider reasonableness and only ask the operator when it is in doubt. You may get a considered answer to a few questions a day, but not to one a minute.
Related Topic