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Starting Friday, hospital patients will get new identification bracelets that are meant to increase safety while reducing the number of information bands they need to wear.
Owensboro Medical Health System will switch to the plastic bracelets with a small pouch that can contain colored stickers alerting nurses or doctors of allergies or other conditions.
The Identi-Match III also will contain a blue, hard-plastic tag with raised numbers similar to those on a credit or debit card.
The seven numbers are a unique ID code that will follow the patient for the duration of his or her hospital stay.
That code can be assigned to, and follow, a patient in emergency situations or at times when identity is unknown.
More important, it also will be assigned to all areas related to a patient’s blood work, reducing the chance of error in drawing, testing or giving blood.
The OMHS blood bank workers “have to be very, very careful, very specific about identifying the patient,” said Cynthia Alvey, director of nursing support services.
In the past, blood bank bands were among the half-dozen information bands a patient might have to wear.
“Instead of putting multiple bands on people, this system allows us to use different color alert stickers,” Alvey said.
The blood bank bands were small and sometimes discarded because they were thought to be insignificant, Alvey said. That meant retesting the patient’s blood, she said.
The new bracelet is more noticeable and has patient information that will be listed on a waterproof and scratchproof Mylar label stuck to the plastic ID tag.
Also, the Mylar label will include a bar code with information that once was handwritten, reducing the chance for human error, Nancy Augenstein said.
“We’re going to have a computer-generated label instead of a handwritten one,” said Augenstein, OMHS’ blood bank supervisor.
Representatives of bracelet manufacturer St. John Bio-Logics Inc. of Valencia, Calif., started training OMHS staff members Monday in the new system.
Admissions, registration and emergency department workers, phlebotomists and more than 700 nurses will be trained, Alvey said.
They have been informed about the change since November, she said.
“Our goal was to make sure that people didn’t walk into their training and that was the first time they heard about it,” Alvey said.
The bracelets will also be used for some outpatient services, including some transfusions and two-part procedures that are done over two days, Augenstein said.
The hospital is looking at using the bar code to be sure patients are correctly identified when they are given medications, Alvey said.
“This prepares us to be able to move to that project,” she said.