Long-term care pharmacy automation

Due to prescription or patient residency changes, many medications go unused. With traditional blister cards, the patient’s remaining medications must be destroyed to ensure regulatory compliance. Each year approximately $2 billion dollars are lost in the U.S. health care system due to disposing of unused oral solid medications in LTC facilities. Today, forward-thinking facilities are taking back control of their pharmacy inventory by packaging and dispensing medications on demand. Only the medications needed for a specific med pass are dispensed.

To thrive in today’s competitive market, long-term care pharmacies need to operate efficiently, take full advantage of reimbursement opportunities and deliver excellent client service. Remote dispensing, powered by automated packaging and dispensing systems, reduces the number of daily medication deliveries, saves pharmacy labor and coordination time, minimizes drug waste processing typical of blister cards and enables capture of additional short-cycle dispensing fees. By packaging up to 60 doses per minute, our automated packaging and dispensing solution drastically reduces the time it takes nursing staff to prepare for a medication pass.

In traditional long-term care dispensing models, patients and caregivers have to wait for pharmacy deliveries every time there is a prescription change, new order or newly admitted resident. Using our on-site medication packaging and dispensing systems, long-term care facilities are able to eliminate the wait and shorten the time to first dose. With up to 240 medications available on site, nurses can quickly package pharmacist-approved medications before each med pass, or on-demand to facilitate new residents, First Doses, STAT orders and PRNs. Automation also ensures down-to-the-dose accountability via labeled patient-specific, multi-dose packets, available on demand. With remote dispensing, it’s like have a pharmacy right at the facility!