PRN medication without Excel: the underestimated time sink

In many homes, PRN and single-dose medication is still tracked on hand-maintained Excel sheets or paper forms. It works — until it doesn't. Precisely because these administrations are irregular, the bookkeeping is laborious and the overview is quickly lost.

Where the time goes

Someone has to maintain an Excel list. Each administration is entered later, in the evening or at the end of a shift, often from memory or from a note. Stock is counted separately, written into a second column, and reconciled against the order. As soon as several people work on the same file, the familiar problems appear:

• Administrations are entered twice, or not at all.
• The counted stock and the list drift apart.
• A pack runs empty before anyone has triggered a reorder.
• On order day, there is no clear picture of what is actually running short.

These are not dramatic errors. They are the small, everyday losses that add up over weeks — and that are hard to reconstruct in a dispute, because a hand-maintained list keeps no reliable history.

What digital administration records actually do

Carenji moves this work away from the after-the-fact list and onto the moment of administration itself. Instead of catching up at the end of a shift, the nurse signs off the administration with a tap — with a timestamp and an initial, right at the resident's side. The history then builds on its own:

• Tap instead of catch-up. Each administration is documented in the same moment it happens.
• Stock counts down. With every signed-off administration, the recorded stock decreases. A separate counting column is no longer needed.
• Hint before order day. Carenji knows the pack size and surfaces a reorder hint before the regular order day arrives — so a line item doesn't first come to attention when the pack is already empty.

What matters is what Carenji does not do. Carenji does not decide whether a PRN administration is indicated, and it does not dose. Indication, selection, and dose remain entirely with the qualified staff. Carenji orders and records — the clinical decision is made by people.

On the prescription fee — as a worked example only

It is often argued that better stock control reduces unnecessary orders. We have no robust figures for that, and we deliberately state none here. Anyone who wants to estimate it for their own home needs their own inputs: the number of affected line items, the usual pack size, the actual pattern of demand, and the prescription fee that applies in the home. Only from those values can a worked example be built — we do not claim a flat-rate saving.

Competencies and the ongoing evaluation

The basis for nursing competencies remains the GuKG; a digital record changes nothing about that. Carenji is prepared to reflect a possible future regulation within the ongoing evaluation of the Wiener Pflegeheimgesetz — whether and how, for instance, a collective subdelegation becomes permissible is open. Carenji explicitly makes no claim that a collective subdelegation would be permissible today.

Status and invitation

Carenji is in its demo phase. We are looking for pilot partners from Austrian long-term care who want to try out digital administration records for PRN and single-dose medication with us under real conditions. Anyone who would like to help shape it is welcome to get in touch.