Thousands of discharged patients rely on their hospital pharmacy to receive medication for long-term conditions, but many could be missing out because pharmacy systems require time-consuming manual workarounds that staff do not have the time to manage.  System C customers report saving 40% of staff time on existing processes using technology that can also deliver an immediate 20% cost saving for the NHS.

Hospitals will prescribe specific medication for patients following discharge or in the outpatient setting. Some medicines, such as those for HIV treatment and other long-term conditions in oncology and rheumatology, must only be supplied by a hospital pharmacy under medical supervision. Hospital pharmacy departments often outsource this fulfilment service to third party suppliers.

Current processes are often carried out manually due to the limitations of existing systems and use workarounds to dispense to a patient’s home. Time spent managing consent and filling out invoices by hand reduce the capacity of pharmacists to offer the service to the full range of patients that could benefit.

With System C's CareFlow Pharmacy, the pharmacy department can automate the whole process, saving huge amounts of time and money for the NHS and providing a much better patient experience.

CareFlow Pharmacy has been specifically developed to support homecare and community services for hospital pharmacists. It enables the hospital prescriber to initiate the smooth delivery of ongoing medicine supplies directly to the patient’s home with their consent.

It is a lifeline for hospital pharmacists, as it reduces the administrative burden associated with ordering, invoicing and recording of dispensed items to a patient by automating processes that were previously carried out manually.

The Challenges of Dispensing Medication to a Patient’s Home

Challenges with existing approaches include using:

• Manual Purchase Orders (PO)
• Manual (or paper) records for consent
• Manual payment of invoices
• Manually dispensing medicines
• Manual accounting into the trust finance system.

This cumbersome approach limits the number of patients that hospital pharmacists can manage, as staff have limited time to provide such a service. Some trusts may only deliver such a service to rheumatology patients, for example, due to a lack of capacity to manage more patients.

Management and financial issues can also prove problematic. Stock levels on the pharmacy system will be incorrect if steps in the dispensing process are missed. Existing processes can involve an average of six transactions, and each stage needs to be followed in careful sequence.

If any stage is missed, a trust could quickly become in arrears due to the value and volume of the goods involved. In addition, the need for dedicated reporting can stifle the ability to see what is happening.

Immediate Cost Savings and Reduced Impact on Staff with CareFlow Pharmacy

CareFlow Pharmacy has dedicated functionality for Homecare that can: 

• Manage agreements with suppliers
• Manage consent to treatment
• Prepare patient-specific POs for supply
• Manage delivery records and invoice matching
• Manage transparent contractual pricing to oversee costs agreed upon for services
• Define uplifts for service charges
• Provide automatic receipts
• Issue medication directly to the patient once the invoice is approved
• Provide dedicated reporting.

Customers report that CareFlow Pharmacy has helped save 40% of staff time and thousands on medication budgets. Hospitals no longer needs to process the VAT on the medication, so the cost of the drugs is therefore reduced by 20% immediately, which can be worth hundreds of thousands for trusts.

In addition, staff time is saved administering the process, and patients no longer to come into hospital for their medication.

What Customers Think

System C customer University of Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust has helped scope, develop, and test the Homecare functionality from 2013.

Since its launch, the number of patients going through using the functionality has quadrupled, and it has quickly become a permanent part of the pharmacy team’s toolkit.

“There is no way we could manage the patients that we do without it,” says Lynsey Murray, Chief Technician (Pharmacy Finance and Information) at the trust.  “Homecare services save clinic time because we’re managing treatments without patients needing to come in. When required, nursing support is available to allow the administration of medication in a patient's own home.

It has helped the Trust make significant financial savings and saves the pharmacy department time as well. CareFlow Pharmacy makes the process so much quicker and easier to process the workload – we could not manage this number of patients using our old process of raising orders, booking each line in and then issuing to the patient and then processing the invoice.

“There are currently 6,000 patients being cared for through the technology, with each needing a minimum of two prescriptions per year. CareFlow Pharmacy has helped us save 40% of the time on existing pharmacy process of staff time, equating to approximately 10 weeks per year.”

Learn more about CareFlow Pharmacy's Homecare functionality here.