Photo By Dale Davis | Patients at Naval Branch Health Clinic Fort Worth will see some changes in the...... read more read more
Patients at Naval Branch Health Clinic Fort Worth will see some changes in the clinic’s pharmacy operating hours beginning next year.
Based on resounding feedback received through the Interactive Customer Evaluation (ICE) comment system, the clinic’s pharmacy will be open from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, beginning January 1, 2020.
Changes in the pharmacy’s operating hours are intended to improve the care experience by having all pharmacy windows manned and open throughout the entire day.
“Patients can expect to arrive at 8 a.m. and find the pharmacy fully staffed, with all three windows open and adequate support staff in the background,” said Robert Lee, NBHC Fort Worth supervisory pharmacist.
“When eight bells are rung, we will open all three windows and hit the ground running.”
Lee says there’s more to filling a patient’s prescription than simply handing out medication, and that meeting the pharmacy’s standards of care requires time and manpower.
“The activities at the pharmacy windows-- queuing patients, identifying them, checking their TRICARE eligibility, screening their prescriptions for completeness, legibility, compliance with legal and regulatory requirements, and inclusion of their medications on our formulary, takes an enormous amount of time” Lee says. “Dispensing, at the other end of the process, requires queuing, identifying the patients, checking to ensure every medication has been accounted for, providing counseling, obtaining the patients' signatures, and closing out the queuing ticket.”
Under the pharmacy’s current operating hours, only one customer service window is open at the beginning and end of each day, leading to increased patient wait times.
Lee says the change in customer service hours will allow the pharmacy to better utilize its limited staff, helping to ensure that each position in the pharmacy can stay fully manned throughout the entire day.
“We cannot increase the number of windows,” Lee says. “But we can ensure the three windows we have remain fully staffed as much as possible.”
NBHC Fort Worth’s pharmacy serves more than 40,000 active duty service members, retirees and their dependents in the Dallas-Fort Worth area each year, dispensing an average of 500 medications per day.
| Date Taken: | 11.19.2019 |
| Date Posted: | 11.19.2019 15:11 |
| Story ID: | 352403 |
| Location: | FORT WORTH, TX, US |
| Web Views: | 115 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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