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Medication Safety for Seniors is a Top Priority
 Holy Cross Hospital has created a unique patient safety culture to protect our geriatric patients from unintentional accidents, including adverse drug interactions. We know that older patients often have multiple health problems that require a number of medications, which can leave them vulnerable to adverse drug interactions, and dangerous drug contraindications.
That’s why our pharmacy department has developed a number of patient safety initiatives to ensure the safe administration of medications:
- As a standard part of our inpatient services, a pharmacist reviews the home medications of every hospitalized patient over age 65.
- We’ve adopted the latest hospital technology to ensure medication safety for older adults, including:
- An automated adverse drug event alert system that issues a warning when a potentially dangerous drug or combination of drugs has been ordered
- Drug infusion “smart pumps” that ensure the safety of drug delivery by alerting clinicians when drug doses ordered are outside of the normal range
- Our care team discusses all new drugs or doses of medications with our patients’ physicians to ensure safe transitions home after hospitalization.
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