There's a great deal of responsibility resting on the proverbial shoulders of any pharmacy tasked with servicing the medication and care needs of any long-term care nursing home, assisted living center or post-acute care facility. Patients in care facilities do not necessarily have the ability to directly manage or advocate for their own needs, and it's up to every organization in the LTC sphere to ensure those needs are met.
Efficient pharmacy operations are of the utmost importance in this context. The long term care pharmacy workflow dictates both the tempo and the efficacy of medication distribution, and in turn helps ensure patients are as comfortable and cared for as possible.
Making that workflow optimally efficient simply isn't feasible with old-fashioned record-keeping and pharmacy operations management — you need to galvanize your processes with leading-edge technologies and tools. Read on to learn more about five distinct situations in which an LTC pharmacy's robust workflow can lead to both short- and long-term improvements:
Increasing interdepartmental cohesion
In the jargon of today's business environment, you hear the phrase "siloed" quite a bit. Generally speaking, it's used in reference to one department or section of an organization that is notably disconnected from all of the other departments. While there are times where this isn't a bad thing, it's usually suboptimal to have a siloed unit that's not fully integrated into the overall workflow.
LTC pharmacies require staff in all departments — billing, data entry, packaging, logistics and pharmacy itself — to be on the same page with one another. It's extremely difficult to do this using either outdated paper processes or standard retail pharmacy software, simply because key data doesn't get where it needs to go quickly or efficiently enough.
By contrast, when using a leading-edge tool like FrameworkLTC, pharmacy administrators can rest assured that every link in the medication management chain is functioning with all of the information they need in real time. Pharmacists can keep an eye on the status of any single medication to check for any issues that will affect packing or timely delivery. Billing managers will be able to track inventory and costs on an up-to-the minute basis and keep a long term care pharmacy's administrators apprised of any discrepancies. And the list goes on.
Greater efficiency through integration
In the same way that it's never good for different departments in an LTC pharmacy to be siloed, key software and tech tools shouldn't be incapable of interoperability. It'll be critical for these assets to, at minimum, be able to easily share information with one another (and ideally do considerably more than that).
A robust long-term care pharmacy workflow will, in no small part, rest on the shoulders of the integrations between essential programs. Your key pharmacy software should be closely integrated with vital tools — not only yours but also those of the LTC facilities you serve. FrameworkLTC boasts more integrations than any other solution of its kind, interfacing seamlessly with numerous eMAR, eHR, facilities management, dispensing, billing and inventory management systems. The improved efficiencies facilitated by this level of interoperability benefit the overall pharmacy operations and bottom lines of LTC pharmacies and the care facilities they serve.
Better formulary oversight
The prescription drug requirements established by formularies are nothing short of ironclad. Abandoning them requires exemption requests — which are time-consuming to make and have no guarantee of being granted. Moreover, when physicians "go rogue" and prescribe medications not covered by the formulary, even if they're approved, it's usually more expensive, and that cost adds up sooner than you might think.
An LTC pharmacy with a well-managed workflow would be able to spot a trend of off-formulary prescribing well before the issue got out of hand. The comprehensive reporting capabilities of FrameworkLTC allow pharmacy administrators to uncover insights of immense value regarding not only formulary adherence but also costs, prescribing habits, Medicare compliance and much more.
Precise automation
The general atmosphere of an assisted living or other LTC facility does not typically have the same urgency as a hospital. But these settings still involve plenty of situations that are effectively life-and-death scenarios. When a nurse puts through a medication order for a patient, it's critical that it be fulfilled correctly and promptly — especially for conditions like Parkinson's or Alzheimer's where lapses in medication adherence can cause immediate and extremely serious health setbacks.
Automated processes leveraged through eRX tools integrated with the FrameworkLTC platform can be one of the keys that helps unlock the potential of medication processing. Key data points (patient name, SIG codes, etc.) are automatically assigned upon initiation of the order, and all the pharmacy technician has to do is select the proper medication from a suggested list. Along those lines, FrameworkLTC uses a similar process to optimize the admission, discharge and transfer workflow, streamlining admissions, discharges, room changes and relevant details of patients' behaviors. When medication orders and refills, as well as the complex ins and outs of ADT, are overseen with leading-edge automation, the possibility for human error drops drastically, helping to maintain an optimal threshold of patient care.
Meeting unexpected challenges head-on
Nothing is ever static in a field as complex as health care. Pharmacies never know what challenges the next month, week or even day will bring: We only have to look back a calendar year to see the devastation wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic on the LTC sphere (along with the world at large).
The LTC pharmacies have weathered the COVID-19 storm as best as they could’ve managed to do so, in no small part, because of precise long-term care pharmacy workflow procedures they implemented and new tools they adopted. These include everything from establishing rigorous disinfection and temperature-check protocols to the use of remotely operated dispensing systems that further minimize contact. Tools like FrameworkLTC that bolster communication and cooperation between pharmacy staff, facility representatives, caregivers and patients are nothing short of invaluable in these uncertain times.
