Blog Is Your Clinic Following HSA Best Practices?

Regulations change all the time, and your clinic management software provider should keep up with the latest requirements and suggested changes. Not all clinic management software track the batch of medicine that you are prescribing to the patient – even fewer allow you to print the batch number and expiry right on the medicine label.

In October, the Health Sciences Authority released a new regulation regarding the labelling of Therapeutic Products (TPs). If you repackage any TP, then it must be labelled with the following information:

1. Therapeutic Product Name
2. Quantity of active ingredients
3. Batch Expiry Date (HSA recommends this be communicated to the patient)
4. Batch Number (patients should always know the batch number, in case there is a recall)

To be able to print HSA compliant labels, your clinic management software must also track batch numbers and expiry dates. If your software does not already track these key metrics, it is unlikely that it will be able to print them on a label. Changing a software to track batches of inventory (when it doesn’t already) typically requires changing how that software is hard-wired.

Even though changing a software’s architecture to track medicine batches is difficult, this does not excuse medical software vendors from adhering to best practices. If by April 30 your CMS has not been updated to allow the tracking of batch numbers, it begs the question: in what other ways do they not follow best practices? Health regulations and standards have grown more strict and complex overtime, not less, and your software vendor should be a key stakeholder in ensuring your clinic is compliant.

Plato already tracks batch numbers and batch expiry dates. If you are using Plato and want to ensure that you stay HSA compliant, double check that your staff are keying in batch expiries and numbers whenever they add a new medicine (Therapeutic Product) to the system. Feel free to email support@platomedical.com, if you want to schedule a free training session on HSA-compliance for your staff.

Finally, it is a good idea to track batch numbers and expiries for all medicines, not just ones that have been repackaged. Should a medicine get recalled, Plato enables you to quickly figure out which patients have received that recall medicine, so you can reach them and prevent them from taking it.

Find out more about Plato.

Find out more about the HSA’s new requirements (https://www.sma.org.sg/membership/index.aspx?ID=316)