BINGHAMTON, N.Y. — Pharmacy continues to utilize technology to streamline tasks like medication dispensing, packaging and inventory management, freeing up pharmacists to focus on patient care and clinical services. This automation may help with reducing the risk of human error, improving efficiency and enhancing patient outcomes. It also has some additional benefits.
“At iA, we believe that pharmacy automation should not only enhance patient care but also streamline operations to improve all team operations. Often overlooked, organizations looking to offer an employee prescription program is one way to leverage central fulfillment to scale an organization’s operations to meet the program needs,” says iA chief executive officer Tom Utech.
He notes that by integrating central fill into the employee prescription fulfillment process, there could be many benefits, including reduced operational burdens, improved turnaround times and an overall better experience for employees. “A central fulfillment model leveraging technology has been effective for retail chains and health systems looking to reduce on-site workloads and improve efficiency and could be an ideal option for other organizations looking to scale their operations to employee prescription programs.”
He adds that when applied appropriately to an employee prescription program, central fill may help establish a consistent, scalable and cost-effective way to provide prescriptions for an organization’s workforce.
Here’s a deep dive into these potential advantages:
Improved pharmacyoperations
Utech says a key benefit of central fill is the ability to streamline dispensing workflows and give pharmacists time to focus on patient care and valuable operations tasks instead of spending hours dispensing prescriptions. “For employee prescriptions, central fill can batch, process and prepackage orders so they’re ready for quick pickup or delivery whenever and wherever they’re needed. As a result, wait times and employee satisfaction can be improved,” he notes.
Increased cost savings and efficiency
“Running prescriptions through a central fill facility may reduce fulfillment costs in maximizing the number of prescriptions processed and minimizing waste. Automated technology like central fill has the ability to process thousands of prescriptions per day, which may significantly lower the cost to fill, and in turn increase efficiency,” says Utech. “This automation may translate to long-term real savings for the employee benefits program,” he adds.
