Pharmacy Automation Guide for Long Term Care Pharmacies

Long-term care facilities are looking for pharmacies they can count on to provide efficient, error-free dispensing, meet the local regulatory requirements, and reliably connect to their EMR. Pharmacy automation helps you confidently meet the ever-changing needs of the market so you can keep your customers satisfied, as well as earn new business.

What is Pharmacy Automation?

Pharmacy Automation replaces legacy systems and unreliable manual processes. Through software, automated equipment, and innovative systems, Pharmacy Automation ties together pharmacy management, packaging, verification, and archiving into one efficient, versatile workflow.

 

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What’s Important to LTC Facilities?

Your customers are facing many challenges: staff shortages, employee burnout, medication dispensing inaccuracies, adherence and compliance issues, and more.

So, what is important to them when it comes to choosing a long-term care pharmacy partner? Most likely, they’re looking for:

  • Efficient dispensing and delivery
  • Survey and regulatory requirements
  • Reports for the facility
  • Connectivity to their EHR/EMR
  • Ability to track orders from inception to delivery

By understanding these challenges and expectations, we can see why pharmacy automation solves many of these pain points—not only for your customers but for the long-term success of your business.

 

The Benefits of Pharmacy Automation

Manual processes are slow, expensive and introduce more points for failure. Legacy automation can be unreliable or just unable to meet the ever-changing needs of your business and of the market.

By modernizing your operations with pharmacy automation, you can address these challenges and offer the following benefits for your customers:

  • Reduce costs, waste, frustration
  • Boost morale and retain staff
  • Gain more time with patients by spending less time at cart
  • Improve accuracy in prescription dispensing

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There are various ways that modern pharmacies are innovating their processes. By employing one or several of the following automation solutions, modern pharmacies are optimizing their workflow and realizing their full potential.

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Strip Pouch Packaging

Configure pouches practically any way you like in order to meet the needs of facilities and regulations.

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Cycle Time Slicing

Configure med passes by patient, NDC, day of week, date and time, just about any way imaginable.

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eMar integration

Cut administration time and increase safety using a single bar code scan rather than individually recording each med administered.

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Image and data archiving of all orders

Easily retrieve images and data for any order, any pouch, any time.

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Configurable reporting for facilities

Access hundreds of standard reports or configure just about any reports dreamt up by your customers.

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Unique bar code on each pouch

Track individual pouches or orders through each step of your workflow.

Let’s get into the specifics of how each of these pharmacy automation components can help you increase efficiency and accuracy.

 

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What are Automated Medication Dispensing Solutions?

One of the most effective ways to increase production and enhance your pharmacy workflow is to integrate an automated medication dispensing system.

This system can synchronize and automate multiple processes, such as strip pouch packaging equipment, medication detection equipment, along with the software needed to run the equipment at maximum efficiency.

 

What is Medication Strip Pouch Packaging?

In care facilities, caregivers administer medications to patients several times daily.

Medication strip packaging systems allow pharmacies to package and label individual doses for patients, ensuring the correct dose each time. As this type of packaging accommodates and supports both unit- and multi-dose medication regimens, it can help increase patient compliance. Packagers can include pharmaceutical drugs as well as nutritional supplements.

Long-term care centers benefit from medication strip packaging because it ensures the correct dosage of medication for each patient.

By integrating packaged doses, residential care facilities can reduce the time that they spend dosing and administering each medication to their residents every day. Automation software allows pharmacies to integrate various preferences and settings into their packaging processes.

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Software and Equipment in Pharmacy Automation

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Software

Pharmacy automation software, like NexusRx, gives you the ability to configure facility, floor, and patient-level preferences to allow for faster, safer med passes, while enabling pharmacy floor level changes to keep up with the reality of day-to-day pharmacy operations. The software you choose is at the heart of your pharmacy automation system.

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Automated Pill Packagers

Automated packaging equipment has a place in every LTC Pharmacy. However, the exact equipment will vary based on factors such as floor space and production needs. Noritsu offers strip packaging machines that are designed for pharmacies that are low on physical space and equipment designed to meet high-output needs. In order to determine exactly which strip packaging system is right for your processes, you can explore packager options from Noritsu online and reach out for a custom quote based on your needs.

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Med Detection & Verifiers

Verifiers visually check the contents of each medicine pouch against a library built from your own formulary. This process is much quicker and more accurate than the human eye, making it safer and more efficient. Noritsu’s verifiers are the most accurate on the market. See them here.

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Tray Loading Systems

Our tray loading system works with your pouch packager to offer a safe, fast, and easy to use method for adding, split-dose, one-off and less frequently used meds to your workflow. This eliminates the need to stop production to manually load pills and reduces the chance for mistakes by pre-loading trays using a system of intuitive LEDs to help operators visualize where to place each medicine in the tray.

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Automatic Pill Splitter

Using an innovative scissor action cutter, our pill splitter offers the fastest and cleanest cut available. Add pills to the cassette, input the number of pills you need split and let The Blade do its job. Part of our complete suite of pill packaging equipment and pharmacy automation supplies, it splits pills quickly and cleanly while producing far less dust than other pill splitters.

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Strip Pouch Boxes

Strip pouch boxes offer a convenient way for patients and caregivers to dispense their meds, while also offering you a chance to stand out in the facility. At Noritsu, we can help you build your own custom printed strip pouch boxes with your own branding and graphics designed to your specifications and can handle all of the printing and manufacture of the boxes for you. When you need more boxes, just stop by our online store to quickly and easily order more of your custom design.

Tips for How to Market Your Pharmacy to LTC Facilities

The key to partnering with long-term care facilities is to know how to target them and appeal to their needs. Long-term care facilities are looking for pharmacies they can count on to provide efficient dispensing, meet the regulatory requirements, and reliably connect to their EHRs. Build your marketing strategy to highlight how your pharmacy excels in these areas. We work with our clients to help set them up for success and effectively communicate their value to customers and prospects.

  • Understand the needs of your target care facilities
  • Create a strong online presence
  • Research your competition
  • Establish your social media presence
  • Engage with patients and potential customers
  • Create an informative website
  • Network through LinkedIn and events
  • Communicate your unique value proposition through quality sales materials

We help our clients create marketing packages with case studies, pitch decks, and 1-pagers, and we’ve developed a free Sales Kit for LTC Pharmacy for you to download and customize with your brand and services.

Get the Sales Kit

Pharmacy Automation Success Story for Neil Medical Group

Headquartered in Kinston, North Carolina, Neil Medical Group is a trusted pharmacy services partner for long-term/post-acute care and assisted living providers across the southeast. Neil Medical, founded in 1984, distributes medical equipment and supplies, drugs and surgical products, as well as providing pharmacy, therapy and consulting
services.

As a long-term care pharmacy, Neil Medical functions as a distribution warehouse, while also focusing on successful patient outcomes. In order to develop a strong customer base, Neil Medical continuously strives to improve accuracy, efficiency, and productivity, while also focusing on cost containment.

“As a high-volume pharmacy, we needed to evolve and move away from the outdated punch card system we had been using for more than 30 years, not an easy change;” explains Ross Brickley, vice president of pharmacy services at Neil Medical. “Our goal was to improve pharmacy workflow, increase productivity, and provide exceptional service to our customers; but we needed a partner.”

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...we needed to evolve and move away from the outdated punch card system we had been using for more than 30 years, not an easy change...

Ross Brickley | Neil Medical

Ultimately, Neil Medical selected Noritsu as their partner. “Noritsu’s automated pharmaceutical packaging technology not only allowed us to efficiently automate drug packaging, but provided us with the ability to ensure accuracy. We were very impressed with Noritsu’s machinery, as well as their demonstrably strong customer support.”

The results have been quite impressive for Neil Medical. “We are now at an 80 percent conversion rate,” explains Brickley. “With four operating pharmacies, this has been a remarkably fast conversion, especially considering the two-year process took place during a global pandemic.”

In addition, Neil Medical has already seen a notable 20 to 25 percent improvement in medication dispensing accuracy. “The strip pouch packaging system has not only improved our pharmacy efficiency and safety, but the ability to tie into our eMar [electronic medication administration record] system creates less steps in the administration process,” explains Brickley.

Ready to learn more?

We’re here to help answer your questions. Whether you are upgrading from a legacy pill packaging system or are completely new to Pharmacy Automation, we have the expertise and the solutions that will make a difference for your business.

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