Historically, pharmaceutical dispensing has been a manual process. A study by the National Institute of Health showed that medication errors are the most frequent and avoidable source of harm to patients. Increased demand for prescriptions, coupled with staffing shortages, overworked and distracted staff, and multiple demands on those filling prescriptions including patient consultations and phone calls could create an environment ripe for errors. Medication errors may include dispensing the wrong medication or incorrect dosage, miscalculating dosages, and failure to identify drug interactions or contraindications. These errors can be costly. Each year 7 million patients in the U.S. are affected by medication/dispensing errors and the cost of care for those affected patients exceeds than $40 billion annually
One of the many benefits of centralized fulfillment is the improved reliability it affords prescription fulfillment by improving accuracy and reducing dispensing errors caused by human error. iA solutions leverage NEXiA® Software Suite, which includes multiple checkpoints via unique barcodes that are read and validated throughout the fulfillment process. No step is completed without a positive match, and the software sends an alert if an error occurs.
Every prescription is reviewed by a pharmacist who gives their full attention to this important task, without the distractions of answering phones and talking with patients while verifying prescription accuracy.
Another benefit from central fill is that it can free up more time for pharmacists to work with patients, discussing their medications, which could improve patient compliance.
Human errors can occur, and pharmacists are no exception as they understand the risks inherent with manually counting and dispensing medications. Automating these tasks reduces that risk, improving the reliability of medication fulfillment, while freeing up time for staff to focus on patient care.
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