Lancaster First in the World to Integrate an EHR and Patient-Controlled Pain Med Pump

The world’s first-ever integration between an EHR and a patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) pump is now live at Lancaster General Health, which developed the integration in conjunction with Epic. PCA pumps allow patients to self-administer pain medications, up to the prescribed dose. In the past, nurses had to manually program these pumps from the medication orders. Now, integration with Epic means the order details from Epic are automatically sent to the pump, eliminating the potential for errors from manual programming. Barcode scanning provides another level of safety, helping ensure that the right patient receives the right medication.

The integration is bidirectional, so data about the patient’s self-administration flows from the pump back into Epic. As a result of integrating this data with Epic, clinicians now have transparent and accurate data to transition patients appropriately from intravenous to oral medications.

You can read more here. Epic community members can find a Success at Seven newsletter about Lancaster General’s previous work on smart pump integration here.