by Donna Williams, RN, BS, MBA, CDONA/LTC

Most skilled nursing, rehabilitation, and long term care facilities continue to use antiquated processes to ensure medication availability for new admissions and drugs ordered for emergencies.  Typically, for new admissions, the orders are transmitted to the pharmacy and the facility awaits the delivery from the pharmacy on the next “run.”  For emergency medications such as antibiotics when have are time sensitive for first dose administrations, a plastic box is stored in the facility with a limited collection of commonly prescribed antibiotics and medications such as warfarin and sodium polystyrene sulfonate.  Duplicate documents are hand-written to account for drugs that are removed from the kit and the pharmacy will typically replace the kit within seventy two hours.  Several disadvantages can be attributed to this labor intensive paper process.   Therefore, the prospect of a new technologically advantageous process is as appreciated and refreshing as a cool breeze on a hot summer night.

Onsite automated medication dispensing devices deliver on-demand medications in the facility 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.  The advantages of onsite devices include significantly improved accessibility to medications, decreased medication errors, and improved accountability and documentation, just to name a few.  Current devices available on the market can store and manage an inventory of up to 350 different medications and can be customized to the organization.  Inventories are electronically monitored and managed, tracking each drug dispensed in real-time by the operating pharmacy.   Some vendors use biometric technology with fingerprint scanning to quickly allow the user access to medication.   Software programming can be integrated into the Electronic Medical Record, eliminating redundancy of efforts and increasing staff efficiency.  Lastly, the device is restocked by a pharmacist as dictated by usage.

An onsite pharmacy would be ideal for many healthcare centers, but is not typically an option.  The implementation of an onsite automated dispensing device is certainly the most feasible alternative.   With a growing impressive list of advantages which culminates with improved patient safety and care, careful consideration including cost analysis is certainly warranted.