Our system Medication Safety Council has been working on BCMA compliance, and an interesting question has bubbled up involving practices around patient verification when patients decline to wear wristbands. A few of our neurobehavioral health units have come up with some rather "creative" workarounds to scan a patient barcode during medication administration. We don't want to encourage patient scanning just to comply with a metric goal, but rather to increase patient safety by confirming that the correct patient is receiving the medication.

Have others addressed this in policy (e.g., alternative barcode not attached to patient, verbally confirming patient with two patient identifiers and documenting appropriate override reason that patient declines wristband, etc.)? Have your facilities set a lower BCMA goal for EDs or neurobehavioral health units? Other best practices?

Thanks in advance!
Amanda