Owensboro Health
The Challenge
For many years, pharmacy delivered most patient medications to nursing alcoves located outside patient rooms to enhance nursing workflow. Pharmacy automation supporting this model included a ROBOT-Rx central pharmacy robot for 24-hour cart fill, a carousel dedicated to patient first doses, and a second carousel to fill automated dispensing cabinets.
As the technology neared end of life, pharmacy leaders evaluated multiple technology and process options. Must-haves included support for nursing's preferred patient-specific distribution model, enhanced medication safety processes, scalability to allow for future growth, and reduced burden on pharmacy staff.
The Solution
Owensboro Health chose Omnicell's Central Pharmacy Dispensing Service (CPDS), which includes the XR2 Automated Central Pharmacy System, an expertly trained on-site technician dedicated to efficient robot operations, best practices and benchmarking tools, change management expertise, and ongoing optimization to maximize value.
The Impact
In Owensboro Health's model, the XR2 system automates medication storage and retrieval with 100% barcode scanning to increase medication safety, improve operational efficiency, and maximize inventory control. The XR2 system leverages manufacturer barcodes, making unit-dose repackaging unnecessary, and supports more than 90 percent of non-IV and non-narcotic formulary in various package forms including individual blisters, blister cards, vials, cups, packets, syringes, and others.
The impact includes automating up to 95% of cart fill, automating up to 50% filling of XT automated dispensing cabinets, doubling the medication storage capacity and reducing manual picks by 50%, increasing inventory accuracy and reducing waste through advanced algorithms, and reducing unit-dose repackaging staffing by 90%. Night shift technicians were reallocated to higher-value priorities such as making IVs, dealing with code carts, and delivering medications to nursing units. "The XR2 robot has been great for our medication distribution model. We're automating more doses and have cut manual picks by more than half," said Jason Collins, Director of Inpatient Pharmacy Services.
Visit Omnicell.com/XR2 to learn more today.