Medication Lifecycle Auditing

Medication lifecycle auditing is a critical process in healthcare management that ensures the safe and effective use of medications from ordering to administration and beyond. This comprehensive approach involves tracking and reviewing every step of the medication journey to identify and mitigate potential errors and risks, such as drug diversion. By maintaining a detailed and accurate record of all steps in the medication lifecycle, healthcare providers can enhance patient safety, improve treatment outcomes, and comply with regulatory requirements.

Drug diversion causes widespread harm in the healthcare system. Diversion typically means patients in need of pain medication go undertreated, which causes suffering and impedes healing. Clinicians who divert drugs due to addiction harm themselves and potentially harm patients. And healthcare organizations and systems face legal repercussions, financial losses, and damage to their reputations.

While medication lifecycle auditing may take place as part of an investigation into illegal drug diversion, healthcare providers should take proactive measures to ensure that they can create detailed audits at any time. Ideally, medication lifecycle monitoring should be automated and continuous. This saves time and increases efficiency, while also supporting swift responses to suspicious activity and drug diversion.

Imprivata Drug Diversion Intelligence (DDI) enables efficient drug diversion monitoring in a single platform for quick incident response. Imprivata DDI can flag suspect actions such as clinicians regularly pulling more medication than needed or wasting more medication than is standard. Preventing drug diversion with DDI protects an organization’s patients and workforce, while also satisfying regulatory requirements for managing controlled substances.