Situation Assessment
Little Company of Mary Hospital (LCMH) was looking for a workflow solution that would help them better manage and more effectively process pharmacy orders to improve efficiency, patient security and accountability.  Physician orders were being sent to the pharmacy from throughout the hospital via a vacuum tube system which was a cumbersome, paper-based, manual process.  There was no tracking of the efficiency of pharmacy order processing, and orders could be lost or entered out of order from that in which they were received.   Prioritizing critical ICU orders was on an ad hoc basis and left room for less critical orders to be filled first.  Processed physician orders were stored as paper copies in filing cabinets and offsite with a storage vendor, which created excess monetary and space costs.

Solution Overview
LCMH selected Captaris products coupled with Risetime custom development and services to collectively address their business and logistical requirements.  The Pharmacy Workflow Application with Meditech MAGIC Integration provided an electronic automation solution to process pharmacy orders as they are faxed from nursing stations throughout the hospital. 

Captaris RightFax is used to receive and convert faxes into electronic form which utilized their existing investment in RightFax and the fax machines at each nursing station.  Captaris Workflow is used to capture the Patient Visit ID number from a barcode label affixed to each physician order and insert it into Meditech MAGIC via the Risetime Meditech Integration Component (RMIC) to ensure a significant reduction in entry errors.  The RMIC also monitors Meditech MAGIC for changes during entry and prior to submission to help prevent overwrites of customer data or cross-patient data entry.

Pharmacists view and select pharmacy orders from the order task list view in the Captaris Workflow desktop client.  Pharmacy orders are presented to pharmacists in a First-In, First-Out fashion with STAT prioritization.   Workflow automates the retrieval of the patient record in Meditech using the patient visit number (V#) read from barcode on the faxed order.  If there is not a barcode or it is not readable, the pharmacists have the ability to enter the V# manually which is also pushed into Meditech. 

The pharmacist then enters the order information into Meditech.  Upon the filing of the patient record, Workflow verifies the V# in the open record in Meditech matches the V# of the pharmacy order open in the Workflow window before allowing a final save in Meditech.  The pharmacists also have the ability to enter comments related to the order and to pend an order so it can be worked at later time.

Value Measurement
The Pharmacy Workflow Application with Meditech MAGIC Integration has provided LCMH many benefits, particularly when it comes to patient satisfaction. Processing times of pharmacy orders have been drastically reduced. Patient safety, a critical concern to all hospitals, has been increased through proper routing and prioritization of all orders. Pharmacists, and all administrative users of the system, have greater accountability in that all data entry is tracked by User Identification.

Additional benefits include:

·         Electronic means for receiving and processing pharmacy order requests

·         Audit trail and tracking for all pharmaceutical requests

·         Pharmacy orders are stored and presented in a First-In, First-Out fashion

·         STAT prioritization to ensure ICU orders received priority in processing

·         Escalation for medication requests that have been sitting in the queue too long

·         Automatic retrieval of patient visit record in Meditech triggered from the patient visit number located on a barcode on the physician order

·         Improved patient security through automatic verification before submission that the medication request currently being worked on matches the patient record currently being viewed in Meditech

·         Eliminate off-site storage of paper documents, reducing operating costs