NMCP’s New Pharmacy Cabinets Increase Patient Safety, Improve Dispensing Efficiency

Photo By Petty Officer 2nd Class Paul Wu | 171129-N-NR803-018 – The “smart” cabinet system displays a number and color that notifies the pharmacy technician at Naval Medical Center Portsmouth (NMCP) of the location of a patient’s medication. NMCP is one of the first Navy treatment facilities to use these cabinets that increase patient safety and improve the pharmacy’s dispensing efficiency. (U.S. Navy photo by Sonar Technician 2nd Class Paul Wu)  

PORTSMOUTH, VA, UNITED STATES

11.29.2017

Story by Petty Officer 3rd Class Paul Wu 

Naval Medical Center - Portsmouth

The Naval Medical Center Portsmouth (NMCP) Pharmacy Department has installed pharmacy “smart” cabinets at three of their pharmacy locations to increase patient safety and improve the pharmacy’s dispensing efficiency. NMCP is one of the first Navy treatment facilities to use these cabinets.
The smart cabinets keep NMCP’s pharmacy at the forefront of workflow and safeguarding, since the majority of pharmacies across the country continue to use traditional dispensing methods to serve their patients.
“Having this keeps us ahead of the ball game,” said Lt. Cmdr. Heather Rosati, division officer for the Outpatient Pharmacy. “We’re keeping patients safe by decreasing dispensing errors and preventing patients from walking away with an incorrect order.”
The new cabinet system is one of several initiatives the pharmacy is instituting – from new equipment installation to updated policies – to continue to improve safety and efficiency, which positively impacts customer experience.
NMCP pharmacy technicians have been utilizing the new system for the last month. The cabinets are in operation at NMCP, Branch Health Clinic Boone at Joint Expeditionary Base-Little Creek, and at the Scott Center Annex pharmacy, which is adjacent to Norfolk Naval Shipyard. NMCP’s remaining branch health clinics will receive the cabinets in the coming months.
Rosati said that incorrect orders rarely occur, but the new cabinets will help bring the occurrence even closer to zero. As the pharmacy staff becomes fully trained in using the new system, the process will also become more efficient and reduce wait times for patients in one of the Navy’s busiest pharmacies.
The cabinets create a simple workflow assembly that tracks a patient’s prescriptions electronically from the time they are ordered until the time that a patient picks up their medications.
The smart system is designed to mitigate issues that pharmacies at large typically see. The system does this by tracking each patient’s medication by linking a patient’s medications with the basket they are placed in. The cabinet’s baskets each have a specific radio frequency (RF) signature that allows pharmacy staff members to track the location of a patient’s order throughout the entire process.
“We can track exactly where in the process a patient’s medications are just by looking it up in the computer and without having to physically search different holding areas or pharmacy counters,” Rosati said.
Prior to the installation of the new cabinets, pharmacy technicians would have to search for a patient’s prescription manually to verify where in the filling process a patient’s medications were. Potential inefficiencies could result from the staff sometimes searching for an alphabetically misplaced prescription on the shelf or having to decipher prescriptions from patients with same last names.
With the new system, the exact location of a patient’s prescription is logged by the system and given its own isolated space apart from the other hundreds of prescription orders the pharmacy is processing at that time.
Furthermore, the system ensures additional safeguards by monitoring and making sure the pharmacy technician who is processing a specific order is the only technician who can access that patient’s prescription.

• Date Taken: 11.29.2017
• Date Posted: 12.07.2017 13:55
• Story ID: 257801
• Location: PORTSMOUTH, VA, US