AcuDose-Rx Users Experience Improved Patient Care, Reduced Pharmacy Turnaround Times, Tighter Medication Security

Aultman HospitalCanton, OH

Aultman Hospital is an independent community teaching hospital in Canton, Ohio utilizing a centralized pharmacy model.

“Spatial constraints dictate how we operate,” said Jim Toohey, Aultman’s director of pharmacy. “We have a really long hallway configuration and needed to minimize nurses traveling to cabinets. The AcuDose-Rx cabinets give us sufficient capacity, and because we restock the cabinets once a day, the filling process is now quite efficient. We’ve also improved efficiencies and met legal requirements in our dispensing process with the use of the FastEntry™ biometrics finger swipe device.”

Aultman Staff Nurse Tammie Albrecht, RN, PCCN, finds that the new cabinets have improved patient safety. “In our old system, there were three or four different meds in a single drawer that would pop open. Our AcuDose-Rx cabinets feature high-capacity locking drawers, so whenwe dispense only the pocket of the selected medication can be opened,

ensuring that we take out the correct medication. AcuDose-Rx has definitely improved patient safety, and the high capacity drawers enable us to address patient needs faster.”

Mimi Gozdan, RN, MSN, CNS, clinical informatics nurse, echoes that. “Stat meds are stored in the AcuDose-Rx cabinets, and we can give an ad hoc or new order simply by scanning the information in. Once we have the physician order, we go to the cabinet and access the patient profile and select the med. We then go to the patient bedside, scan the ID band and the bar-coded medication to create the order for administration. We no longer have to wait for pharmacy to deliver the order so our patients aren’t waiting a long time for their medicine. I did a study and the average times on the old system was 6 to 8 hours whereas now it’s less than 1 hour. We’ve reduced pharmacy turnaround time by 100 percent and at more 4,000 orders each day; this has made a huge difference in the care of our patients.”

Solutions in Use

McKesson Automation Solutions500 Cranberry Woods DriveCranberry Township, PA 16066(724) 741-8000www.mckesson.com

© 2010 McKesson Corporation product and service names listed herein which bear the ® and ™ symbols are registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. All other product and service names are protected by non-registered trademarks or service marks, respectively.

AUTO207_4/10

Solutions in Use – AcuDose-Rx

of users on a real-time basis. With the biometrics ID, the only changes we have to make are for terminations or staff additions. I’m a big stickler for med security, and AcuDose-Rx has really tightened it down. It’s been a huge help that NarcStation reconciles with AcuDose-Rx when dispensing out. If anything differs, it will flag you right away.

Gena Mathison, RN, Clinical Coordinator, finds the ability to review different dispensing patterns has made an impact in controlling drug diversion. “The nursing field has always had issues with diversion, but with AcuDose-Rx we can identify potential issues and pinpoint problemssooner. Now we can see who is trying to access the cabinet and whether they were attempting to access a specific pocket. If a nurse is pulling a certain med all of the time, it sends a red flag so we can go back to that person with proof of what they were doing.”

Titus Regional Medical CenterMount Pleasant, TX

Titus Regional Medical Center in Mount Pleasant, Texas is a 165-bed facility that operates under a centralized pharmacy model.

Ruth Sabacky, Director of Pharmacy, was involved in the transition to AcuDose-Rx cabinets, which was part of a larger effort to add an integrated process into their workflow as they move to bedside administration. “We’ve only been up since August but our addition of AcuDose-Rx has helped us put new processes in place. Some of the processes it uses are definite improvements over Pyxis. For example, the narcotic filling is better, more reconciled. A major refill is done once a day, the rest are segregated by department and while it takes the techs about the same amount of time as it used to, it is easier withAcuDose-Rx. The FastEntry™ dispensing method has helped a lot in the pharmacy because before we were dealing with passwords and had to enter the list