GSL, patient safety just got safer Published Aug. 23, 2013 By Senior Airman Michael Ellis 6th Air Mobility Wing Public Affairs MACDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. -- "You can't put a price on safety," said Maj. Crystal Price, 6th Medical Support Squadron officer in charge of pharmacy operations. The Global Script Locator (GSL) system has already more than made up for its incurred cost by increasing efficiency and reducing patient hand out errors (rated the most frequent operator error in pharmacy services). Ultimately, this new innovative addition has increased patient safety. Tech. Sgt. Michael Barton, 6th MDSS NCO in charge of pharmacy support, explained how because of the GSL one employee can process 600 scripts in 15 minutes, saving several man hours a day. With the previous antiquated "brown bagging" procedures mental fatigue was common, as technicians would visually and physically scan rows with hundreds of bagged prescriptions sorted by patients' last name and last few digits of their social security number, said Barton. The GSL system (installed at MacDill April 2013) uses radio frequency technology to track individual bins that correspond to only one patient's prescriptions. As a staff member scans a patient's identification card, a shelf within the GSL lights up indicating the location of the script. Staff members have unique micro-chipped badges that must be swiped in order to retrieve the illuminated bin containing a patient's prescriptions. If someone attempts to access the GSL system without a special access badge an alarm will sound. In addition, if a technician possessing a badge opens a wrong drawer or removes the wrong bin that does not coordinate with the scanned patient's identification card, an alarm will also sound. A software program can track prescriptions from the time their generated, filled, stored, retrieved and signed for by a customer. In addition to diminishing errors and an integrated automated tracking system, the GSL has "reduced prescription storage floor space from about 60 to 20 square feet," added Barton, also mentioning how workload capacity has simultaneously increased. Outside agencies, such as the Air Force Medical Operations Agency, has also noted the success of the GSL system at the clinic. In the future, like pharmacy operating procedures may become the benchmark Air Force-wide. Considering the 6th Medical Group processes an average of 634,000 prescriptions annually (in the Department of Defense's largest single-unit catchment area), safeguarding patient safety remains at the forefront with everything the pharmacy does at MacDill AFB. USAF. (U.S. Air Force Graphic by Rosario "Charo" Gutierrez) Photo Details / Download Hi-Res USAF. (U.S. Air Force Graphic by Rosario "Charo" Gutierrez)