In Pursuit of a Patient-Centered VA Prescription Label

Published in the July/August Issue of Patient Safety & Quality Healthcare

By Erin Y. N. Narus, PharmD, RPh; and Joe D. Youngblood, RPh

The patient-centered prescription label movement has roots in primary research studies by notable health literacy proponents (Davis et al., 2006; Davis et al., 2008; Shrank et al., 2007; Sharnk, Avorn et al., 2007). This foundational work paved the way for setting standards for prescription label formats, content, lexicon, and numeracy interpretation. As the data mounted, consensus recommendations emerged in publications from the American College of Physicians Foundation (ACPF)(2007), United States Pharmacopeia (USP)(2010, 2011), National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP)(2009), American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)(American Society of Consultant Pharmacists Foundation/AFB, 2008), and the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP)(2010), to name a few.

Each organization has played a critical role in the understanding of what it means to deliver a patient-centered prescription label. It is to these consensus guidelines that the VA, through a joint venture between the VA National Center for Patient Safety (NCPS) and VA Pharmacy Benefits Management (PBM), has turned in evaluating, redesigning, and testing potential standardized outpatient prescription labels. It is, to say the least, a considerable task, considering the VA serves more than 4 million individuals through both local VA medical center outpatient pharmacies and Consolidated Mail Outpatient Pharmacies (CMOPs)(Aspinall et al., 2009). Though the VA’s seven CMOPs provide mail-order prescriptions to veterans via highly automated distribution systems at strategic locations throughout the country, they lack a standardized label.

Implementing a consistent label format and style, therefore, could significantly improve the reliability of information transfer between the healthcare team and the patient by promoting a “shared mental model.” The concept of the shared mental model reaches across high-reliability industries and uses standardization to achieve the goal of error reduction (Sculli & Sine, 2011).

To read the full article please visit Patient Safety & Quality Healthcare