We have had a few significant errors with dispensing patient-specific medications from Omnicell CSM (Controlled Substance Manager), where the incorrect LASA drug was selected.

Root cause:
Unlike Omnicell XT cabinets, CSM does not support profile mode dispensing. While patient-specific doses can be pulled from the CSM, the user must manually select the medication to dispense, which creates a risk of selecting the wrong drug or formulation. Contrast this to the XT cabinets, where the patient's ordered medications are displayed on the screen and each drug is linked to the correct product in the Omnicell.

I understand that CSM is intended to act as a warehouse that supports the XT cabinets, and it is the XT cabinets from which doses are dispensed for patients. However, a significant gap in this design is the fact that there will inevitably be orders for infrequently used controlled substances that are not stocked in the unit’s XT cabinet which must be dispensed from Pharmacy’s CSM. In these scenarios, we really need the CSM to behave like an XT cabinet and allow profile dispensing.

Have other hospitals that use Omnicell struggled with this issue?

I would love to hear any solutions that you may have come up with.