Danuty Misiak
Oct 19, 2023
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Although only a few facilities in Poland currently use ward pharmacies, the interest in this innovation is growing. Find out why it is worth using automated ward pharmacies and how they can support hospitals in their daily operations.
Medication flow in hospitals - what you need to know?
Pharmacotherapy, or treatment with medicinal products, is one of the most commonly used therapies in a hospital treatment process. According to estimates, an average hospital in Poland manages nearly 130,000 medicinal products, with drugs being the second largest cost factor after salaries.
Taking into account the aspect of ensuring an adequate level of patient service and primarily their safety during drug administration, managing the flow of medicinal products is an extremely important area of operation for medical facilities.
In most Polish hospitals, the drug distribution model is based on the hospital pharmacy and ward pharmacies. The hospital pharmacy is responsible for fulfilling the demand for drugs indicated on the hospital list, as well as for the distribution of drugs, managing inventory and ordering specific quantities of a particular drug.
Unfortunately, in these processes, there are often various types of shortcomings. The most commonly encountered ones include:
Shortages in drug orders,
Inefficient management of drugs resulting in an increasing number of expired products and the need to dispose of entire drug packages,
Incorrect assignment of the drug dose to the patient,
Dangerous interactions between pharmacological agents,
Unauthorized access to medication.
These problems can be effectively eliminated by introducing automated dispensing cabinets. According to the State of Pharmacy Automation report, 69% of medical facilities worldwide that offer up to 100 patient beds already use this type of improvement, as do 75% of those providing between 101 and 200 beds, 71% of hospitals with 201 to 400 beds, and 67% of large medical facilities (above 400 beds) – all of them have adopted automatic dispensing cabinets (ADCs).
Importantly, ADCs are highly regarded by medical personnel. According to a research, the satisfaction level of surveyed medical industry representatives is very high, reaching 98%, with 84% of hospital pharmacy managers rating the automated medication dispensing cabinets as ‘good’ or ‘excellent!’.
Automatic medication dispensers - how do they work?
Automated Dispensing Cabinets (ADCs) are the name for automated ward-based medication cabinets in the USA. They are equipped with a touchscreen computer integrated with the hospital information system (HIS), a storage area with access-controlled pull-out drawers for medications, and a temperature monitoring system inside.
In order to dispense medication to a patient, ‘authorized’ medical personnel log into the ADC and select the relevant prescription. In addition, automatic dispensing cabinets can be used to:
verify medication stock levels
generate automatic medication orders that go directly to the hospital pharmacy
check medication expiry dates
ensure medications are stored at the appropriate temperature
activate alerts for low stock, expired, or below minimum stock medications
fully identify each patient
create a fully repeatable and controlled medication distribution process in hospitals
optimize spending on medication therapy in hospitals.
Ensure transparency in pharmaceutical management with UnitBox medicine cabinet.
The automatic medicine cabinet UnitBox is a response to the needs of hospitals for reducing costs resulting from medicine losses, improving daily work of medical staff and enhancing patient safety and health.
The automated medicine cabinet UnitBox utilizes modern technologies in the process of efficient and effective flow of medicines and other medical products in hospitals. It ensures full transparency in pharmaceutical management by enabling quick analysis of current inventory levels and drug dispensation, as well as planning and optimizing expenses for pharmacotherapy.
In addition, the automatic medicine cabinet significantly improves the quality of work of the medical staff. By usingUnitBox, each nurse has access to patient documentation from ‘one’ place, which streamlines a proper daily task organization. Drugs are dispensed in an organized and supervised manner, as the automatic medicine cabinet enables their retrieval after logging in and is additionally integrated with HIS. This significantly increases patient safety which promotes ‘faster’ recovery.
Additionally, the UnitBox system ensures optimization of medicine orders in hospital departments, providing the ability to verify the stock even for individual doses. This gives the hospital pharmacy a full picture of the flow of medicines and enables optimization of subsequent orders, ultimately reducing hospital operating costs. The efficient retrieval of drugs is ensured by the search function based on various criteria, including name, EAN code, manufacturer or substitute.
Why is it worth using automated drug cabinets in hospitals? Improving the ‘drug distribution communication’ in hospitals.
Departmental drug cabinets, through the automation of many routine actions, improve the communication between the hospital pharmacy and departments. In this context, the ability to generate automatic drug orders or automatic inventory control is crucial.
Increasing patient safety during drug dispensing
Dispensing drugs by authorized personnel, after logging into the system, minimizes the risk of mistakes and administering the wrong medication or inappropriate doses to patients. Full patient identification and integration with the HIS system increases the confidence that the patient is being treated ‘correctly’.
Increasing the efficiency of the medical staff's work
Operating departmental drug cabinets and the hospital pharmacy imposes a range of duties on pharmacists and nurses. Inventory control, ordering, sending drugs to hospital departments, distributing them to patients - all of this requires a great deal of time and focus.
The system for managing departmental drug cabinets automates many tasks, thereby increasing the efficiency of staff work and facilitating the execution of administrative tasks.
Improve your drug distribution system - learn more about the capabilities of UnitBox ward pharmacy.
The automatic dispensing cabinet UnitBox developed by Pixel Technology significantly improves the quality and efficiency of drug distribution in hospitals.
The software used in ward pharmacies facilitates control of:
drug doses,
inventory replenishment,
expiration dates.
In addition, it ensures full compliance with the EHR system, easy patient identification, and drug control on the wards, minimizing staff involvement.
The average cost of pharmacotherapy per patient fell by 15%, while treatment reimbursement increased by 50% (23% more patients were hospitalised). Tested 3 months after implementation.
If you are eager to learn how an automatic drug cabinet can improve the functioning of your hospital and contribute to reducing operational costs, schedule a UnitBox presentation.
Investing in the UnitBox automatic ward pharmacy system guarantees a ‘quick return’ on your expenses while raising the prestige of your medical facility.