Pharmacy Automation from the Inside

1. Your pharmacy already has a PMS, and you already generate a script label package that has bar codes on it.  You’re on your way.You don’t have problems selecting your vials or putting customer’s labels on them.  Congratulations. Now comes the first real time consuming part.  Fetching the proper supply bottle, to fill the script, from its storage space, and delivering it to the pill counting work station.  Probably filed alphabetically and gets relocated periodically.  The system works, but fetching the drug supply bottle and returning it to its proper location is probably the second most tine consuming chore in filling a script.  Maybe we can show you how to make it number one by reducing the time spent the now number one. 

4. Here comes the most painful and time consuming part for most  pharmacies.  The label package and the required supply bottle have arrived at the pill counting work station.  Even if your pharmacy has added a form of automation to handle the top 60, or 100 most popular drugs, you are still looking at more than half of the scripts that require pill counting.  If you are counting these scripts with a manual counting tray, the good news is that there is a better way that will save you time (and, therefore, money) and relieve you of the tedium of the spatula (tongue depressor).  It will do this with zero potential for cross contamination and while adding features like drug verification, and transaction reports.  It will improve your counting accuracy and speed, and reduce your mental fatigue.  Best of all, you can afford it, because it is not expensive and the ROI is excellent.

5. The technique we are recommending here is a new pill counting by weight system.  The system uses anywhere from 1 to 30 of Torbal’s flagship Pill Counting Prescription Scales, the DRX500s, as workstations, along with a single all solid state (no moving parts) central database server that stores Drug Data and Average Piece Weights (APW) for each drug in the pharmacy formulary. 

6. If you are using another form of automation to fill scripts at the pill counting workstation you may want to consider the following; is it a cross contaminator (pills come in contact with common surfaces) that requires cleaning to keep it counting accurately?  Are you cleaning it often enough to count accurately?  Are you cleaning it often enough to protect your customers?  If you did clean it often enough would it save you any overall time?  Is it faster or slower than the Torbal system and counting by weight?  Is it more accurate or less?    Does it count all of the pills and capsules in the formulary?  Wouldn’t it make good sense to replace it with a system that will save you more money (and with less risk) going forward.