I
recently announced
an upcoming episode of
The Doctors
that will show General Data’s Personal ID hospital patient wristbands in a segment on issues with color-coding wristbands in hospitals.
The episode aired last Monday (Feb 2nd).
Here is the segment that featured our
Personal ID wristbands with bar codes and patient photos as part of their discussion on the problems of colored wristbands:
Its interesting to note the following points that were brought up in the discussion:
- Lack of consistent color-coding standards among hospitals can cause dangerous confusion.
- Hospital workers can mistake personal bracelets (ie. Live Strong) for hospital-issued colored bracelets which are supposed to signify something.
- “Code Blue” over the intercom can mean different things in different hospitals.
- Patients, particularly adolescents, will sometimes try to switch wristbands.
Their conclusion seemed to be that utilizing bar codes on patient wristbands as part of a positive patient identification system would really help eliminate much of the confusion and problems with color-coding and patient identification in general. Our experience has been that hospitals that implement a properly planned, designed and administered bar code patient identification system will be able to do all of that and more.
As I discussed in my
previous post, the fact that this issue is being discussed on daytime television shows may indicate that this issue has gone “mainstream.” How will that affect hospitals today?
This segment has also generated
an interesting discussion thread
on The Doctors web site.
Our sincere thanks to the producers and staff of
The Doctors
for including General Data in this segment.