Baxa Corporation Launches "Culture of Safety" Campaign to Recognize National Patient Safety Awareness Week

Englewood, Colo. – Baxa Corporation, a leading developer of technology for the safe handling, packaging and administration of fluid medications, announces the launch of a targeted campaign recognizing patient safety. The year-long "Culture of Safety" campaign is intended to emphasize the need for a true cultural change in attitudes and practices geared towards patient and medication safety. The campaign is timed to launch during National Patient Safety Awareness Week, March 8-14, targeting both pharmacy and nursing staff in U.S. hospitals.

"Baxa intends to play a leading role as a change agent where both patient and medication safety is concerned," says Greg Baldwin, Chairman and CEO. "In difficult economic times, budgets and services can be reduced or eliminated – making it more important than ever to help bring patient safety awareness levels up," says Baldwin. Baxa provides devices and systems that improve pharmacy productivity and provide solutions for enhancing patient safety, and reducing the opportunity for medication errors.

National Patient Safety Awareness Week, organized by The National Patient Safety Foundation, is held annually and designed to engage staff, patients and community by emphasizing the critical need for partnership and participation in the drive for a safer healthcare system. Programs that highlight new methods for improving the information exchange that occurs during patient-provider encounters will be launched and promoted during the course of the week.

One of the ways that Baxa is bringing patient safety to a new level is through its Abacus™ Order Entry and Calculation Software. Through customer feedback and experience with the program, Baxa determined that establishing appropriate warning limits could reduce an element of risk with the highly configurable software. Without impacting the flexibility of the program to meet facility-specific compounding requirements, Baxa was able to offer guidelines for the use of its Abacus Software that improve patient safety by limiting the opportunity for catastrophic errors and enhance the function of the program through greater use of templates. One of the components of the Baxa campaign is to offer free white papers detailing customer experiences with the Abacus tool and how the new warning limits have helped facilities avoid medication errors and have positive patient outcomes.

Other 2009 Culture of Safety initiatives include targeted email campaigns, sponsorship of speakers at industry meetings and case studies geared towards patient and medication safety improvements.

About Baxa Corporation

Baxa, a customer-focused medical device company, provides innovative, solution-based technologies for medication handling and delivery. Its systems and devices promote the safe and efficient preparation, handling, packaging, and administration of medications. Privately held, Baxa Corporation has subsidiaries and sales offices in Canada and the United Kingdom; direct representation in Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Luxembourg, The Netherlands and Switzerland; and distribution partners worldwide. Visit http://www.baxa.com

About the National Patient Safety Foundation

The National Patient Safety Foundation is an independent not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization that has been diligently pursuing one mission since its founding in 1997 – to improve the safety of patients. NPSF also occupies a unique position by virtue of its inclusive, multi-stakeholder approach, which fosters collaboration on the issue of patient safety. Visit http://www.npsf.org

Contacts:

Marian Robinson, Vice President, Marketing
Baxa Corporation - http://www.baxa.com - 800.567.2292 ext. 2157 or 303.617.2157
Email: marian.robinson@baxa.com