Barred and feathered

Healthcare Purchasing News, August, 2005 by Bruce R. Wray

To the editor:

Thanks for your article in the June issue on bar codes and RFID. I appreciated the balance you brought to a topic that has typically been treated with more hype than fact.

I must take exception, however, to a statement made by Ken Kleinberg of Symbol Technologies. He is quoted as saying "It takes about 10 to 15 seconds to scan a bar code, so you're talking about saving that much time when they have to read a drug bar code label anyway?"

Coming as I do from a world leader in high quality bar code labels--both pre-printed and printed on-demand--I was horrified! Show me a bar code that takes 10 to 15 seconds to scan and I'll show you either: a) a bad scanner (certainly not from Symbol Technologies which produces great scanners!); b) an untrained operator; or c) a poorly-printed bar code label. If it's taking 10-15 seconds to scan the label, you might as well go back to your pencil and clipboard.

Bruce R. Wray

Marketing Manager

Computype Inc. St. Paul MN

From the editor:

After having personally witnessed healthcare workers trying to scan a bar-coded wristband on a hospitalized loved one over the Independence Day holiday weekend I can safely say that the bulk of the clinicians' time was spent searching for the patient's wrist that typically was obscured by the bedrail, positioning the wrist properly so that they could scan the bar code and then positioning the reader to scan the code. If the patient's asleep and you have to wake him up be sure to add at least five seconds to deal with his semi-conscious struggling. So 10 to 15 seconds isn't out of the question. Two of your three explanations are plausible (I concur that it's highly unlikely Symbol would produce a bad scanner), particularly ff straggling with a half-awake or semi-consciously uncooperative patient is part of operator training.