With a nationwide pharmacist shortage and soaring costs, many rural hospitals are unable to staff a pharmacist around-the-clock. A collaboration between Northwest TeleHealth and Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center & Children's Hospital, TelePharmacy is a solution that helps to fill this health care gap by providing rural hospitals with affordable, continuous access to registered pharmacists through real-time conferencing and digital communication.
TelePharmacy provides pharmaceutical care to rural hospitals from a central location through the use of automated dispensing, digital scanning and integrated computer systems. This unique system is designed to maintain 24/7 coverage and provide continuity of service when a rural hospital is without a pharmacist or closed for the night or weekend and is fully integrated into the INHS network with backup servers and support from the INHS Help Desk 24/7.
- Improved patient outcomes by quality of patient care and continuity of service
- Improved financial outcomes by increasing revenue through improved charge capture and drug inventory control
- Reduction of cost by efficient use of scarce pharmacist resources
- Enhanced productivity of pharmacy and nursing staff
- Improves pharmacist satisfaction and retention in rural settings by freeing time to focus on patient care pand providing real-time access and communications with peers
- Compliance with Joint Commission Standard MM.4.10 and with HIPAA requirements
- Approved by the Washington State Board of Pharmacy and meets WAC 246-873-080
- Remote order entry directly into the hospital's Meditech information system
- Online assistance to identify and resolve medication orders having incomplete or missing information
- Rural hospital clinical initiative and protocols incorporated into the TelePharmacy service
- Increased patient safety through medication order review by a registered pharmacist and related consultations
- Order prioritization with STAT orders turned around within 15 minutes
- Compatibility with all digital scan technologies, forms of automation and hospital computer systems
TelePharmacy serves as an extension of your existing pharmacy staff, supplementing existing service to create a comprehensive pharmacy program. Our registered pharmacists are trained on your hospital's pharmacy information system, as well as on all relevant policies, programs and initiatives and interface directly with your internal clinical database to provide the appropriate medication therapy association to the patient's current diagnosis
- When a medication order needs to be reviewed, hospital staff digitally scan the order to the TelePharmacy center
- Orders are queued so that STAT orders are reviewed first
- The pharmacist logs into your hospital's pharmacy computer system through a secure, encrypted, HIPAA-compliant connection, reviews and enters the order and documents consultations
- If your hospital uses automated dispensing cabinets, such as Pyxis® products, the medication is automatically approved for nurse access. If your hospital does not have automation, the nurse receives a digital scan approval.
- As an additional value, if your physician or nursing staff has a question or needs drug information, he or she can speak directly to the pharmacist through a TeleHealth video link
- The TelePharmacy center provides a monthly statistical/clinical interventions report to your director of pharmacy