How Do Medication Dispensing Systems Better Patient Care?
The automation of pharmacies is an industry that is supposed to reach global domination by 2025. So much so that experts have faith in the market to grow a staggering 11% from 2018 to 2025.
Automated medication dispensing systems make up a sizable chunk of the pharmacy automation movement. It is true automation is not magical ambrosia that will cure everything wrong with dispensing in hospitals, but it is definitely a start.
In fact, more and more hospitals are fast switching to medication dispensing systems to fight labor costs, rising demand, decentralization of pharmacies, and medication errors.
Increasing Skilled Labor Costs
One in five hospital management boards is of the opinion that their organization's labor costs will undergo a massive surge of up to 5% in the next 12 months. Now that operating margins are closing in and demand is rising, hospitals must find a way to better their efficiency and lower their labor costs.
Before the advent of automatic medication dispensing systems, medication management was largely manual. The new technology promises improvement in productivity and better workflow designs.
Rising Demand for Healthcare Services
An important study by a reputed organization recently discovered that by 2025, US healthcare would need to hire 2.3 million new workers to extend care to a sudden influx of above 65 population in the demographic.
Hospitals must develop a way to keep up with the labor shortage. Workflows must be made more efficient to support the nursing staff.
Pharmacy automation equipped with the latest technology helps people do their job faster and without sacrificing the quality of patient care.
Automated medication dispensing systems also help achieve greater security and accountability.
Decentralization of Pharmacies
Traditional practices required hospitals to function with a centralized pharmacy. All medication requests and administration is managed from this single point. In theory, the model works well, but miscommunication between healthcare providers and nurses can render the system highly ineffective.
It was found that hospitals that adapted to a decentralized pharmacy handled medication requests faster. The administration was accelerated, and pharmacy technicians were out on the patient floor, more accessible to nurses and patients alike.
Medication Errors
In the US alone, 450,000 million people meet an untimely demise because of preventable medication errors. The pressure to minimize such errors is greater now than ever. When asked, nursing professionals stated that wrong doses and infusion rates are often caused due to using abbreviations for drugs and similarities in the names. It turns out the lack of pharmacological knowledge is the biggest deterrent here; one cannot expect nurses to have the same level of experience working with drugs as pharmacists do.
Medication dispensing systems make sure that the right medicines rear the patient care units. Studies found that this halved inappropriate drug usage in a relatively short amount of time.
PD-Rx Pharmaceuticals - Your First Choice for Medication Dispensing Systems
To avail PD-Rx Pharmaceuticals' innovative medication dispensing systems, give us a call at 800-299-7379.
**Disclaimer: The information on this page is not intended to be a doctor's advice, nor does it create any form of the patient-doctor relationship.