Technology

An e-prescribing initiative announced recently by the Big Three automakers might help business, said Hassane Fadlallah, R.Ph. "If this is a move that could bring more prescriptions to us, that would be great,' said the owner of Dix Drugstore in Dearborn, Mich., adding that nearly two-thirds of his business comes from automaker employees and their families." It's got to be a better step for us than some of their other moves, like mandatory mail order."

While not on the New York Times Bestseller List, "USP Chapter 797, Pharmaceutical Compounding: Sterile Preparations"is a must-read for all compounding pharmacists. It took effect on Jan. 1, 2004.

Pharmacy directors looking for the perfect hospital information system are in a bind. There are computer systems that are strong in business management, systems strong in laboratory or imaging or medical practice management, and systems strong in pharmacy. But no system is strong in every area.

SureScripts has signed up two more partners for its electronic prescribing network. Physician Micro Systems, a leader in the development of electronic health records, will connect its Practice Partner Patients Records clinical solution to the SureScripts network. Healthcare software solutions firm, Wellogic, will connect its Web-based healthcare portal, Wellogic Consult, and its underlying health information exchange platform to SureScripts as well. SureScripts will certify both firms and test the systems to ensure successful transmission of e-scripts.

Oklahoma pharmacists will soon have a central database to check in real time whether consumers seeking to purchase pseudoephedrine tablets have exceeded the state's monthly quota of 9 gm per person.

A Texas pharmacy technology company that picked up an Internet drugstore has turned the failing dot-com into a central fill operation to help retail pharmacies compete with their mail-order rivals.

The federal government has proposed rules for electronic prescribing in the Medicare prescription drug benefit and the verdict from the folks putting the technology together is that the bureaucrats got it right.

When three night-shift nurses at a large metropolitan medical center in the Northeast recently called in sick, the skeleton crew on a busy medical/surgical unit ignored the usual protocol involved in the bedside bar-coding of medications. Instead of scanning each patient's wristband and then the bar code on the medication package while at the patient's bedside, the nurses created surrogate patient bar codes and scanned all of them prior to going into patient rooms as a way to save time.

Albertsons plans to provide customers at all of its 2,500 stores with handheld scanners to let them skip checkout bottlenecks. Connected to the company's database and a global positioning satellite (GPS) system, the scanners will read product labels, keep a running total, and charge the customer's credit card at the exit. The devices can also direct customers to the shortest path to the items they want and alert them when their prescriptions are ready. The chain hopes to have the system in place within 18 months.

Pharmacists who kick back after work by surfing the Web are sitting ducks waiting to be plucked if they don't act to protect their machines from prying eyes, according to the authors of a new book on cyber security.

Smart infusion pumps have helped reduce medication errors at many facilities. But cultural changes are needed in hospitals to improve results, according to a panel of pharmacy executives who spoke at ASHP's Midyear Clinical Meeting in Orlando, Fla., in early December.

Wouldn't it be great if your automated dispensing systems didn't break down, requiring you to make a service call? Believe it or not, this is not a pipe dream anymore. The Mountain View, Calif.-based technology firm Omnicell claims it has a new product that can anticipate problems with your systems before they manifest themselves.

If there's one word that defines what a state-of-the-art health-system pharmacy needs to operate efficiently and effectively, it's integration. Computerized physician order entry (CPOE) and bar-coding are fast becoming essential technology tools alongside automated dispensing cabinets, robotics, and the ubiquitous pharmacy information system.

Of overall computer entry errors, 56% are caused by distractions, according to a U.S. Pharmacopoeia 2003 MEDMARX study. In addition, distractions were cited in 78% of computerized physician order entry (CPOE) errors in reports "that documented a contributing factor other than 'none,'" said John Santell, director of educational program initiatives for the U.S. Pharmacopoeia in Rockville, Md.

Pharmacy owners, managers, and drugstore chain execs who have dispensing automation in their pharmacies rated ScriptPro the winner in 23 categories. This conclusion is based on a survey ranking pharmacists' satisfaction with their automated dispensing systems. The survey, conducted by WilsonRx, included 456 respondents, 78% of whom make recommendations or final decisions in purchasing pharmacy automation systems.

As patients in long-term care settings are huge consumers of pharmaceuticals, getting the right medications at the right time to these patients is a formidable challenge.

Avoiding potentially dangerous IV incompatibilities presents a major challenge to pharmacists, nurses, and physicians. Micromedex, a subsidiary of Thomson Corp., recently unveiled IV INDEX, the newest version of its drug compatibility database.

The FDA has published a compliance policy guide for implementing feasibility studies and pilot programs for radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to deter counterfeiting and diversion. The agency has also created an internal RFID Workgroup to monitor the adoption of RFID technology in the prescription drug supply chain. (For more on RFID )

A brave new world some pharmacy prophets warned about has arrived, and California pharmacists are confronting the reality of consumers picking up their prescriptions without a stop at the counter. And that has some R.Ph.s concerned that such dispensing kiosks will short-circuit their patient relationships

In the belief that transparency creates competition and lowers costs, several states have created Web sites that post comparative retail drug prices. Consumer groups say this is a step in the right direction to make drugs more affordable, especially for the elderly and uninsured. But many pharmacists say it's a fool's errand by the states-prices change quickly and postings are rarely up to date. That leads to confusion and consumer anger more than to increased competition, say pharmacists.

Jim Lowe's mission was crystal clear: automate drug distribution, get drugs bar-coded, and move to bedside scanning of medications as soon as possible. Lowe, the director of pharmacy at Erlanger Medical Center in Chattanooga, Tenn., told Drug Topics that the driving force behind automating the drug management system is patient safety and reducing medication errors.

The move toward implementing bar-code reading at the patient's bedside and other points of care in the hospital is picking up steam. Two hospital pharmacists recently discussed their experience implementing this technology at their institutions at a teleconference sponsored by ECRI (formerly called the Emergency Care Research Institute). The two hospital pharmacists who spoke at the teleconference represent a small and a large hospital, respectively.

Which bedside bar-coding system is the best based on feedback from providers in the field? A new report tells all.

Complying with the physical safeguards under the Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act may be the easiest to achieve, since you may already fulfill several of the requirements through adherence to state and federal pharmacy and drug laws.

Keeping a pharmacy's shelves properly stocked can be a monster gobbling up too much of a staffer's time. To help tame the ordering ogre, McKesson has launched an on-line application that streamlines getting the supplies a pharmacy needs when it needs them.

A 90-day field test of paperless labeling solutions is under way at 126 pharmacy sites. One tester, Thomson PDR, has improved its PDR On-Demand appliance, which consists of a small, bar-code-enabled, touch screen kiosk that is up dated daily with the latest product information. Etreby Computer Corp. has opted for a Web-based solution in the race to win PhRMA's backing for the paperless label system to reduce those pesky paper patient inserts. Regardless of which firm comes out ahead, the technology is not supposed to cost pharmacies.

A fully automated pharmacy logistics system for oral solid medications that is capable of unit-packaging and single-dose bar-coding can cost less than $500,000, improve patient safety, and pay for itself in under two years through tight inventory control. So claim the distributors of one such system and some of its clients.

Internet-based paperless pharmacy order management can improve efficiency and enhance patient safety, according to its proponents. "We were determined to get away from paper orders," said Joe Hoffmann, Pharm.D., pharmacy director at 245-bed Wuesthoff Hospital in Rockledge, Fla. "So we searched for something, and what we found is working very well."

Albertsons has selected Initiate Systems' Identity Hub software to cleanse, match, and link the Rx records of pharmacy customers across the supermarket chain's 2,000 locations. Pharmacists can access up-to-the-minute Rx data in real time for drug utiliza-tion reviews regardless of where the script was filled. Initiate's Web site is at www.initiatesystems.com.

New products making their debut at the recent National Association of Chain Drugs Stores Pharmacy & Technology Conference ranged from the big picture of enterprisewide applications to the size of a CD-ROM, featuring information on how to comply with another of Uncle Sam's mandates.