This whitepaper discusses about the various coding standards for the healthcare industry.

The Institute of Medicine’s Quality Chasm report has crystallized attention on the human and economic cost of medical errors. Causes and thus remediation of medical errors is complex. Elimination of reliance on oral and handwritten communication along with minimizing transcription, translation, and interpretation are common elements of remediation.

In August 2001, the Federation of American Hospitals (FAH) announced their resolution on patient safety and reduction of medical errors that included a specific call for standardized machine readable bar coding on single unit dose packaging. The National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting (NCCMERP) and the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) publicly called for the FDA to mandate bar codes down to the immediate unit-of-use package on all medication packages.

Re-printed with permission from HIMSS