TECHNOLOGY
WITH AN AGEING POPULATION AND INCREASED WORKLOAD IN TERMS OF ISSUES SUCH AS FILLING MDS TRAYS, TODAY’S COMMUNITY PHARMACISTS HAVE TO LEARN TO WORK SMARTER RATHER THAN WORK HARDER. OVER THE NEXT FEW ISSUES, WE LOOK AT HOW MANY OF YOU ARE MEETING THESE NEW CHALLENGES..
BUSINESS T
he subject of ‘hub and spoke’ has been hitting the Scottish healthcare headlines again
recently, but the subject is nothing new. Indeed, as far back as 2009??, the Scottish Government, in its 10- Year Vision for Pharmacy, said that robotic dispensing would need to be ‘harnessed to create a health service that would be fi t for the 21st century. Automating the supply of medicines would, the Scottish government said, release pharmacists to spend more time on clinical care.
Since then, some of the multiples have been operating hub and spoke system to release capacity within their pharmacies, particularly for care home supplies and domiciliary monitored dosage systems (MDS). But now, Scotland’s largest indigenous independent group has harnessed IT in its bid to progress with its business growth. And there’s no doubting the fact that Davidsons’ Chemist’s Managing Director, Allan Gordon, is more than happy with the direction of travel.
‘In terms of Davidsons’ business growth, I’m certainly delighted with the speed and progress that we’re making in terms of meeting our long-term objective of having 50 pharmacies,’ he tells SP. ‘As of 1 October, we will have 36 pharmacies in our ‘stable’ and we currently have
10 - SCOTTISH PHARMACIST
GROWTH: HOW TO HARNESS IT
another four in the pipeline for 2018. As we have continued to grow our business, however, it was becoming increasingly clear that we would have to revisit our dispensing processes to streamline the system.
‘With so many pharmacies now in the company, our increased reliance on IT had become a major issue and Karen and I were very focussed on ensuring that we were implementing the most cost-effective and effi cient systems. Last year, we attended the Pharmacy Show in Birmingham and saw loads of loads of central fi ll hub & spoke IT systems but it was only when we went to look at our chosen system in operation onsite that we realised it was an obvious choice for us at this stage of our company’s development.
‘Our new system is a centralised automated dispensing machine, not a robot. It has very few moving parts but allows our pharmacists to connect to a central dispensing machine. The fact that we have so many pharmacies means that a lot of our pharmacists’ and staff time is taken up with fi lling MDS trays - 2,500 patients (10,000 trays) a month at the last count across the company - and the number is growing! We don’t intend servicing care homes with a hub and spoke model yet - just people at home - but you can imagine even dealing with that number of trays, how much time
is taken up with this issue which is becoming increasingly prevalent across the NHS.
‘Over the last few years, many of our pharmacists and dispensers have been complaining about fi lling these trays, not just in terms of the time they take, but also because they end up with sore fi ngers etc due to the repetition of the process.
‘We knew we had to look at a smarter way of working and so began to look at products on the market. While there were certainly some interesting products out there though, we didn’t fi nd anything that ticked all of our boxes.
‘We obviously needed a central hub to house this new dispenser and so opted for one of our Dundee pharmacies, which always has a pharmacist on site. This is naturally very important for us since, although there are now quite a few central dispensing distribution sites in existence.
‘All of our branches will now be connected to the central dispenser and jobs will be logged. The machine will then fi ll the trays automatically. Each tray takes about 100 seconds and, by the time the label is put onto the packaging, the whole process takes about two minutes. When you consider that it takes between fi ve and ten minutes to complete the process
in the pharmacy, you can see how the saving on 2,500+ cMDS patients with trays is pretty substantial.
‘The great thing about this machine is that there’s no need for an accuracy check. We will, of course, check everything for the initial two or three weeks but, since everything is calibrated, and every tablet goes into the canister, the machine knows exactly what should be in the canister and will let us know if there is a problem.
‘Once they’re fi lled, the trays will go into a sealed crate. One of the national wholesalers has agreed to uplift the ready-made trays from the pharmacy and take them to a central depot, from which they will be redistributed the following day.
‘The new robot will average about 2,000 trays a week, which equals ten trays per pharmacy per day. The long- term savings created by this piece of kit will be very substantial. I estimate that the savings in terms of staff time will be particularly considerable. The machine is, after all, only requiring one and a half FTE person working full-time on the MDS trays. For those aspiring groups who are looking to ‘work smarter’ through increased IT, I think it’s perfect. I know it’s certainly perfect for us.’ •
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