Datebase needed for tracking of drugs for a fire department!

I work for a fire department and one of my job duties is keeping track of
drugs that we keep on Rescue's and Engines. Details of it is Date received,
lot #, expiration date, and qty. We are using a excel program that i
developed but since then it has grown. What i am looking for other than
keeping track of them is that i have to make sure it is all seperated by drug
so that way we can find out what's expiring, and how many, and when it came
in. So we can order more.

Is there a database out there already? Or do i just keep it simple in excel?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thankyou

Fire Support

I provide help with Access applications for a very reasonable fee. If you
are interested in outside help, send me a copy your Excel workbook and a
brief desacription of how it works and what you want the database to do and
I will gladlt send you a quote to create the database you want.

Steve



"FIRESUPPORT" wrote in message
...
I work for a fire department and one of my job duties is keeping track of
drugs that we keep on Rescue's and Engines. Details of it is Date
received,
lot #, expiration date, and qty. We are using a excel program that i
developed but since then it has grown. What i am looking for other than
keeping track of them is that i have to make sure it is all seperated by
drug
so that way we can find out what's expiring, and how many, and when it
came
in. So we can order more.

Is there a database out there already? Or do i just keep it simple in
excel?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thankyou

Fire Support

I don't know of a pre-made db for this, but it truly would not be very
difficult to create!

It depends on your needs. If you are asking the question, I'm assuming you
are not completly satisfied with your Excel solution. Keep it simple in
Excel...It really depends on your needs. As they say don't fix it if it ain't
broke.... But if you require better visibility (reporting tools), easier
entry (forms).... then Access is definetly the answer!!!!

If you want to develop a database to do as you mentioned, everyone here will
help you to achieve your desired goal.
--
Hope this helps,

Daniel Pineault
http://www.cardaconsultants.com/
For Access Tips and Examples: http://www.devhut.net
Please rate this post using the vote buttons if it was helpful.



"FIRESUPPORT" wrote:

I work for a fire department and one of my job duties is keeping track of
drugs that we keep on Rescue's and Engines. Details of it is Date received,
lot #, expiration date, and qty. We are using a excel program that i
developed but since then it has grown. What i am looking for other than
keeping track of them is that i have to make sure it is all seperated by drug
so that way we can find out what's expiring, and how many, and when it came
in. So we can order more.

Is there a database out there already? Or do i just keep it simple in excel?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thankyou

Fire Support

"Mark" schreef in bericht m...
I provide help with Access applications for a very reasonable fee. If you
are interested in outside help, send me a copy your Excel workbook and a
brief desacription of how it works and what you want the database to do and
I will gladlt send you a quote to create the database you want.

Steve



Please go get lost Steve...

To the original poster:
Most people here have a common belief that the newsgroups are for *free exchange of information*.
But Steve is a notorious job hunter in these groups, always trying to sell his services.

To *anyone* here in this group:
Feel free to show the link
http://home.tiscali.nl/arracom/whoissteve.html
anytime this so-called Mark (=Steve Santus) advertises here.

Arno R

Stevie, you do not appear to be very bright. You have been told thousands of
times over the past years that these newsgroups are provided by Microsoft
for FREE peer to peer support, not as a vehicle for you to pry on
unsuspecting posters.

So now you are hiding behind your wife's skirts and using her email account.
Should we be contacting her to see if she can make you behave?

John...

"Mark" wrote in message
m...
I provide help with Access applications for a very reasonable fee. If you
are interested in outside help, send me a copy your Excel workbook and a
brief desacription of how it works and what you want the database to do and
I will gladlt send you a quote to create the database you want.

Steve

Steve is what is called in newsgroups as a troll trying to get money for
what others believe should be provided free. Yes, if you could develop it
in Excel then Access is a good expansion of your skills. Hardest part is to
change how you view the data. Excel makes you think in math calculations.
In access you can save yourself a lot of time with table relationships. For
instance you no longer would create a new line for each drug of the same
type. Instead you create a table of all your drugs and then adjust the
quantities. Shelf life of the drug could be loaded once and then access
would calculate expieration dates from your inventory update dates using the
standard shelf life. This is simplified but many stock inventory programs
deal with shelf life, usage and automatic usage of product restocking
requirements. You could also easily add which unit has what and qty on the
unit. Add in a personnel file and you can track who used it and who
restocked. Now this could easily become part of a investigation so testing
and proving it is critical but as a backup you can print reports on stock,
restock and who did it weekly and have the station Chief master EMT sign the
report and file in a secure location. Access will save you much of the
repetitive work and help provide a good audit trail. Start by reading about
relationships and post back as you play, many will jump in with free help
with much more knowledge than myself or Steve. As you'll note, they don't
troll newsgroups for business as they can get enough on reputations. Start
with learning about relational databases. Check out
http://allenbrowne.com/casu-06.html

Pete D.


"Mark" wrote in message
m...
I provide help with Access applications for a very reasonable fee. If you
are interested in outside help, send me a copy your Excel workbook and a
brief desacription of how it works and what you want the database to do and
I will gladlt send you a quote to create the database you want.

Steve



"FIRESUPPORT" wrote in message
...
I work for a fire department and one of my job duties is keeping track of
drugs that we keep on Rescue's and Engines. Details of it is Date
received,
lot #, expiration date, and qty. We are using a excel program that i
developed but since then it has grown. What i am looking for other than
keeping track of them is that i have to make sure it is all seperated by
drug
so that way we can find out what's expiring, and how many, and when it
came
in. So we can order more.

Is there a database out there already? Or do i just keep it simple in
excel?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thankyou

Fire Support

On Mon, 23 Jun 2008 13:09:05 -0700, FIRESUPPORT
wrote:

I work for a fire department and one of my job duties is keeping track of
drugs that we keep on Rescue's and Engines. Details of it is Date received,
lot #, expiration date, and qty. We are using a excel program that i
developed but since then it has grown. What i am looking for other than
keeping track of them is that i have to make sure it is all seperated by drug
so that way we can find out what's expiring, and how many, and when it came
in. So we can order more.

Is there a database out there already? Or do i just keep it simple in excel?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thankyou

Fire Support

I would suggest migrating this to Access. You'll need at least two tables,
perhaps three: a table of drugs, related one to many to a table of Lots,
related one to many to a table of Dispensing (if you want to track when and
for what reason a given dose of drug was actually used, which I would think
likely). These tables might resemble:

Drugs
NDCCode text, primary key
unique identifier, see

http://www.healthcaredistribution.or...arcode_toc.pdf
for description
DrugName
other information about the drug as an entity

Lots
NDCCode link to Drugs
LotNo probably text, using the manufacturer's lot identifier
two field joint Primary Key
PurchaseDate
Quantity
ExpirationDate
other info about this particular lot, e.g. dose units, dose size, etc.

Dispensing
NDCCode link to Lots
LotNo link to Lots
DispensedDate date/time
perhaps fields for the identity of the person who received the drug, the
reason, amount given, etc. etc.

You may also want tables for Indications (i.e. morphine can be used for pain
relief, to acutely reduce blood pressure, etc. etc.) and perhaps several more,
depending on how elaborate you want to get.

Do read up on HIPAA - any time you're storing information about medical
treatments and patient identification, your database is subject to the
(complex and stringent!!) HIPAA patient privacy regulations. Professional
advice from someone well versed in HIPAA would be prudent ($50,000 fines can
put a real dent in your budget!)

--

John W. Vinson [MVP]

There ought to be a different (simple) place to go for people who decide that
they want to pay for help, knowing that they want to get a lot more help than
just a question answered. Maybe with the impramateur or vetting of having
some type of criteria for the providers. Some people really need that. Is
there such a place?

That would meet that need without polluting the concept of this for a free
forum.

"Pete D." wrote:

Steve is what is called in newsgroups as a troll trying to get money for
what others believe should be provided free. Yes, if you could develop it
in Excel then Access is a good expansion of your skills. Hardest part is to
change how you view the data. Excel makes you think in math calculations.
In access you can save yourself a lot of time with table relationships. For
instance you no longer would create a new line for each drug of the same
type. Instead you create a table of all your drugs and then adjust the
quantities. Shelf life of the drug could be loaded once and then access
would calculate expieration dates from your inventory update dates using the
standard shelf life. This is simplified but many stock inventory programs
deal with shelf life, usage and automatic usage of product restocking
requirements. You could also easily add which unit has what and qty on the
unit. Add in a personnel file and you can track who used it and who
restocked. Now this could easily become part of a investigation so testing
and proving it is critical but as a backup you can print reports on stock,
restock and who did it weekly and have the station Chief master EMT sign the
report and file in a secure location. Access will save you much of the
repetitive work and help provide a good audit trail. Start by reading about
relationships and post back as you play, many will jump in with free help
with much more knowledge than myself or Steve. As you'll note, they don't
troll newsgroups for business as they can get enough on reputations. Start
with learning about relational databases. Check out
http://allenbrowne.com/casu-06.html

Pete D.


"Mark" wrote in message
m...
I provide help with Access applications for a very reasonable fee. If you
are interested in outside help, send me a copy your Excel workbook and a
brief desacription of how it works and what you want the database to do and
I will gladlt send you a quote to create the database you want.

Steve



"FIRESUPPORT" wrote in message
...
I work for a fire department and one of my job duties is keeping track of
drugs that we keep on Rescue's and Engines. Details of it is Date
received,
lot #, expiration date, and qty. We are using a excel program that i
developed but since then it has grown. What i am looking for other than
keeping track of them is that i have to make sure it is all seperated by
drug
so that way we can find out what's expiring, and how many, and when it
came
in. So we can order more.

Is there a database out there already? Or do i just keep it simple in
excel?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thankyou

Fire Support

....they want (need..sic) to get a lot more help than just a question
answered. Some people really need that

I try to always judiciously use the above criteria (in my opinion) when I
offer help to a poster. I DO NOT offer fee paid help to all posters! There
are some posts where it is obvious that a quick answer to a question is all
that is needed. Sometimes I will provide a quick answer.

Steve


"Fred" wrote in message
...
There ought to be a different (simple) place to go for people who decide
that
they want to pay for help, knowing that they want to get a lot more help
than
just a question answered. Maybe with the impramateur or vetting of
having
some type of criteria for the providers. Some people really need that.
Is
there such a place?

That would meet that need without polluting the concept of this for a free
forum.

"Pete D." wrote:

Steve is what is called in newsgroups as a troll trying to get money for
what others believe should be provided free. Yes, if you could develop
it
in Excel then Access is a good expansion of your skills. Hardest part is
to
change how you view the data. Excel makes you think in math
calculations.
In access you can save yourself a lot of time with table relationships.
For
instance you no longer would create a new line for each drug of the same
type. Instead you create a table of all your drugs and then adjust the
quantities. Shelf life of the drug could be loaded once and then access
would calculate expieration dates from your inventory update dates using
the
standard shelf life. This is simplified but many stock inventory
programs
deal with shelf life, usage and automatic usage of product restocking
requirements. You could also easily add which unit has what and qty on
the
unit. Add in a personnel file and you can track who used it and who
restocked. Now this could easily become part of a investigation so
testing
and proving it is critical but as a backup you can print reports on
stock,
restock and who did it weekly and have the station Chief master EMT sign
the
report and file in a secure location. Access will save you much of the
repetitive work and help provide a good audit trail. Start by reading
about
relationships and post back as you play, many will jump in with free help
with much more knowledge than myself or Steve. As you'll note, they
don't
troll newsgroups for business as they can get enough on reputations.
Start
with learning about relational databases. Check out
http://allenbrowne.com/casu-06.html

Pete D.


"Mark" wrote in message
m...
I provide help with Access applications for a very reasonable fee. If
you
are interested in outside help, send me a copy your Excel workbook and a
brief desacription of how it works and what you want the database to do
and
I will gladlt send you a quote to create the database you want.

Steve



"FIRESUPPORT" wrote in message
...
I work for a fire department and one of my job duties is keeping track
of
drugs that we keep on Rescue's and Engines. Details of it is Date
received,
lot #, expiration date, and qty. We are using a excel program that i
developed but since then it has grown. What i am looking for other
than
keeping track of them is that i have to make sure it is all seperated
by
drug
so that way we can find out what's expiring, and how many, and when it
came
in. So we can order more.

Is there a database out there already? Or do i just keep it simple in
excel?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thankyou

Fire Support

"Mark" wrote in message
m...
....they want (need..sic) to get a lot more help than just a question
answered. Some people really need that

I try to always judiciously use the above criteria (in my opinion) when I
offer help to a poster. I DO NOT offer fee paid help to all posters! There
are some posts where it is obvious that a quick answer to a question is
all that is needed. Sometimes I will provide a quick answer.

Steve


You really do not get it. These groups were provided by Microsoft for FREE
peer to peer support. Offering fee paid help to ANY poster is not allowed.

John... Visio MVP