Use of bar coding technology to flag ER patients on metformin-containing drugs.

Sixty percent of Jennie Edmundson Hospital's inpatients are admitted through the emergency room. Type II diabetes accounts for 90-95% of all diagnosed cases of diabetes. There were about 1.6 million new cases of diabetes diagnosed in people 20 years or older in 2007. Consequently, we should expect to see an increase in Americans on metformin-containing drugs in the future. Jennie Edmundson Hospital's goal was to develop a hardwired process to identify patients on the medication metformin and who had a CT scan with contrast in the ER and were then admitted as an inpatient.