Growing a pharmacy care home service and simplifying dispensing.

Pharmacies providing a care home service are under more pressure than ever before. On top of dispensing they now play a crucial role in providing care homes with advice and support, systems training as well as undertaking medication audits and reviews. Louise Laban, Director of Sales and Marketing at Centred Solutions, explains how automation is the key to surviving in this new world.

Over the past few years pharmacists have become more and more important in supporting the needs of care home patients. They play a key role in the Enhanced Health in Care Homes model, which aims to deliver proactive care focussed on the needs of the resident, their family and care home staff. But with this model has come an increased workload for pharmacists. They are no longer just the dispensers of medication for care homes. They provide a whole package of support for both residents and care home staff.

The complexities of providing a care home dispensing service.

Even before they took on these additional responsibilities, providing a medication dispensing service for care home residents was always far more challenging than dispensing to patients in the community. Care home residents are prescribed an average of seven medications per day, with many taking 10 or more. Polypharmacy requires meticulous attention to detail. Co-ordinating and managing repeat prescriptions with so many items in an efficient manner to ensure patients don’t run out of medication is logistically challenging to say the least. Robust systems and processes are also required as managing multiple medications in a manual way introduces the risk of human error. There’s also the governance and compliance component of offering a care home dispensing service which can be incredibly time consuming.

This dispensing process is crying out for modernisation. Technology allows pharmacies offering a care home service to automate the most logistic and administrative elements of their workload so they have more capacity to communicate with care home customer, educate care home staff and carry out medication reviews, all elements of their role that require a human touch. In addition dispensing technology provides and invaluable safety net for pharmacy staff working in a pressurised environment and offers a full end to end audit trail down to pack and patient level at all stages of the process.

A shift to original pack dispensing.

It's been great to see pharmacies starting to embrace technology that automates the dispensing process for medication compliance aids (also known as blister packs or dosette boxes). However this type of medication packaging solution is no longer recommended as the first choice intervention for care home residents by both the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) and the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE). This is because there is a lack of evidence when it comes to patient outcomes and in some cases they have been found to do more harm than good. Instead the RPS now recommend original pack medication as their preferred choice for care home residents.

With this in mind, pharmacies need to start looking at how they automate this element of the dispensing process in the same way they have for medication compliance aids. The good news is there is award-winning original pack hub technology that has now been adapted to meet the requirements of the care home market. The solution automates the pharmacy dispensing process to produce bagged and labelled patient medication by care home, institution or facility type. It is already being used by care home hubs as well as hospital homecare and prison hubs so it is tried and tested.

Technology for original pack dispensing

The bespoke workflows mean a pharmacy hub can run at maximum efficiency while meeting the unique needs of the care home market. It offers specific workflows for split packs, fridge items, bulky items, controlled drugs, inner labelling and acutes versus monthly. The software integrates with a pharmacy’s PMR to process orders in the most efficient way, separating orders into bespoke workflows.

With multiple verification checks, it posts alerts for expired medications, provides lot number tracking, manages inventory effectively as well as recording critical drug information including GTIN, EAN and DM&D codes. Software ensures the prescription is visible at every stage of the process. Easy access to data within the automated system also improves efficiency of inventory management, ensuring the pharmacy always has the items in stock required to fulfil the order received.

From a patient safety perspective, it provides drug data integrity and validation by comparing a multitude of inventory management codes against the drug item code. Barcode and RFID technology not only ensures the right medication is prepared for the right patient, it also provides a warning which halts the dispensing process if the drug type and dose don’t match what has been prescribed for a patient. 

If you are interested in learning more take a look at our new white paper, Care Home Hub Automation: How to grow a pharmacy care home service and simplify dispensing.

Pharmacy Automation From Centred Solutions

At Centred Solutions we are dedicated to reducing the workload and boosting productivity for our pharmacies.  We have a team of knowledgeable, customer success managers with expertise in pharmacy, technology and logistics who will be with you every step of the way on your FLOWRx journey. 

Whether you are a pharmacy looking to streamline your operations by receiving medications directly from wholesalers or need support in setting up your own hub, we have the solution for you. 

Contact us today to arrange a demonstration of any of our products