Barton Hospital has adopted a state-of-the-art procedure to make medication use safer.

Before a patient receives a medication, a unique bar code on the patient’s wrist band is scanned and the patient’s information loads on the computer. Then the medication is scanned and verified with the patient’s information. If the bar code on the prescription and the patient information do not match, an alert pops up and stops the nurse from administering the medication.

Medicare encourages bar code scanning with a goal that hospitals adopt this new procedure for 10 percent of all medications in the first three months of use.

Barton Hospital has worked diligently to install this program and within the first month, more than 80 percent of medications are now scanned by a bar code.