I read an interesting article in Beckers today regarding a hospital that suffered a data breach because an unauthorized person stole patient records from an old, unused facility in which they were being stored in bins awaiting shredding. The building was apparently scheduled for demolition but still contained bins of records awaiting destruction. One wonders how long they had been there.
I won’t pretend to know why they had put those records there or what their plans were for the ultimate destruction of those records. But it made me think about old reports, returned medication containers, and other detritus that sometimes accumulates in our pharmacies because we are tyrannized by the urgent. I know from experience that it is easy to become used to the idea that this stuff is laying around. I also recall that dealing with those items can become daunting if it is allowed to accumulate too long.
How do you deal with this? Are there tasks that you know need to be done, but you keep putting them off because other things seem more important? Do any of those undone tasks place your pharmacy, or your institution at risk? If so, what are you planning to do about them?
Just a thought…
The thoughts of this blog are my own, and not necessarily those of my employer or of ASHP.
Dennis A. Tribble, PharmD, FASHP
Ormond Beach, FL
datdoc@aol.com