New safety reference site

It’s been a while since I’ve updated this site. Blame it on the slow nature of August? I do owe a response to “drsaddam,” who commented on my comments on his comments (still following?) regarding VistA Office EHR. (By the way, in a teleconference last Friday regarding the formalizing of the structure of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, Dr. David Brailer declined to comment on the status of VistA Office EHR, which was supposed to have been ready by Aug. 1.)

With that apology out of the way, it’s time for me to get to my point: There’s a new patient safety resource for clinicians called Safer Healthcare. It’s a joint effort of the Britain’s National Patient Safety Agency and the BMJ Publishing Group, with input from the U.S.-based Institute for Healthcare Improvement.

I’m not a clinician, so I can’t offer an endorsement. Check it out and decide for yourself.

And now to digress a bit more.

I just returned from a road trip to a wedding in Toronto. I took some prescriptions with me to see if I could save some money by filling them in Canada, knowing full well that Canadian pharmacies can only fill prescriptions written by Canadian doctors. The pharmacist at a Wal-Mart in Cambridge, Ontario, who clearly has dealt with American customers before, suggested I go to a walk-in clinic to get the proper scripts.

As usual, I got a late start on the 9-hour drive home, so I passed on waiting in line at a clinic to save a few bucks. I did, however, discover that Allegra and Allegra-D are available without a prescription in Canada.

That’s it for the international pharma update. I promise I’ll stick to IT in the future.