Education, electronic alerts help cut insulin pen waste at US hospital
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Key takeaways:
- A U.S. hospital reduced insulin pen waste by 18.3% after bolstering education efforts and medical alerts.
- Costs from insulin pen waste decreased from $33,643 before intervention to $27,774 after intervention.
A multifaceted intervention implemented at a U.S. hospital reduced insulin pen waste by 18.3% in inpatient adult areas, according to a presenter at the Association of Diabetes Care and Education Specialists annual meeting.
Esther Rov-Ikpah, MS, RN-BC, CDCES, BC-ADM, a diabetes care and education specialist at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center, told Healio providers would sometimes use multiple insulin pens for patients at the institution’s adult hospital, particularly when people were transferring to new units. Providers at UCSF Medical Center designed an intervention to reduce the number of duplicate insulin pens used.
“Insulin is a scarce resource that is essential in managing diabetes, a condition that affects many people in the U.S.,” Rov-Ikpah told Healio. “Preventing insulin waste at a large academic medical center involves identifying inefficient practices that are contributing to medication or insulin pen waste and, instead, creating processes that avoid these inefficiencies.”
A multidisciplinary team at UCSF’s adult hospital developed a multilayered intervention with the goal of reducing multidose insulin pen waste. In August 2023, insulin pen waste was discussed at unit staff meetings. Pen waste education was provided to inpatient staff nurses, and a clinical alert for insulin pens pulled was installed in the hospital’s medication dispensing system in October. A medication row for insulin pens was added in the hospital’s transfer navigator in the electronic health record in November. In January, that medication row was moved up to be more visible and was added to the beacon/oncology section of the transfer navigator. Researchers compared insulin pen waste preintervention during fiscal year 2023 with postintervention from September 2023 to March 2024.
During fiscal year 2023, there were a mean 432 wasted insulin pens per month. The number of wasted pens decreased by 18.3% to a mean of 353 per month after the intervention. The percentage of patients for whom a duplicate insulin pen was used decreased from 38.5% before intervention to 32.8% after intervention. Waste from insulin pens cost the hospital a mean $33,643 during fiscal year 2023. The monthly cost from insulin pen waste decreased to $27,774 after intervention.
“It was surprising to learn how much waste and duplication we had when we sought out concrete data to measure this challenge,” Rov-Ikpah said. “The volume of waste was surprising, but also highlighted the urgent need to bridge these gaps.”
Rov-Ikpah said insulin pen waste is something many hospitals contend with, and she believes the health care community could dramatically reduce waste if practices are changed at other institutions. She also said researchers should explore whether AI can be used within the EHR to alert providers at the point of care about duplicate insulin pens or other medication that already exists in the hospital.
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Ikpah ER, et al. P-600. Presented at: ADCES24; Aug, 9-12, 2024; New Orleans.
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