We recently attended HCP in Columbus, Ohio, where I had the opportunity to speak for five minutes in front of the providers in attendance. See a short video clip below. When I thought about what I wanted to convey in such a short amount of time, I reflected on the year we have had. Rhazdrugs has won Premier’s Innovation award, and I have won the Stevie Award’s Thought Leader of the Year.
Rpharmy CEO Laura Paxton speaking in the Provider Orientation & Sponsor Spotlight at HCP.
If you had told me this is what I would be doing 25 years ago, I wouldn’t have believed you. Our lives changed completely when my husband John’s mother died of a preventable medication error in May 2000. Billie was a breast cancer survivor of nine years when doctors discovered a spot on her lungs. She was receiving chemotherapy, and she was supposed to stop taking her Coumadin 48 hours prior to her infusion. She forgot to stop taking her medication, and the nurse forgot to ask her. Twelve hours later, Billie was in the ER, so weak that she couldn’t sit up in the bed by herself. She was admitted into hospice three weeks later. She passed away four months later at the age of 67.
During that time, John’s older sister suspended her treatment for inoperable cancer that had spread from the bile duct to the pancreas and liver. She passed away one month before John’s mother at the age of 46.
I shared this story in Ohio, and I had so many people come up to me to share their own stories of losses from medication error. When we lost both incredible women within a month of each other, John and I took a moment to reflect that we don’t have any guaranteed time with the ones we love. The next year, I joined Formulary Productions. As I learned more about the Formweb software, I realized that the medical error could have been avoided if the nurse had access to software like this when treating Billie. That thought has been a driving force for us as we develop software.
I share this story with you so you understand why we do what we do and why patient safety and healthcare worker safety is so near and dear to our hearts. We do this for Billie and for the mothers and grandmothers that were lost too soon.