Grey Bruce Health Services

The entire pharmacy back end has improved dramatically.

Now, pharmacy technicians can jump in and out of the order management workflow seamlessly, and pharmacists are no longer tied to a single location to verify medication orders. They can view and verify from any computer anywhere, whether in the pharmacy, at the bedside, or remotely.

By enabling the pharmacy to manage medication orders digitally, patient files and prescription information can be accessed instantly and simultaneously at any workstation. Eliminating physical prescriptions means less paper consumption and waste, as well as a faster and more efficient workflow. The pharmacy estimates they save 30 or 40 seconds per order — on about a thousand orders processed per day — which has a huge impact.

The Ricoh solution also created benefits beyond the staff's expectations, including increased visibility into the pharmacy workflow. The solution has improved communication between nursing, physicians and the pharmacy, and allows for a deeper analysis of current workloads and capacity.

Because the previous system used paper orders and fax transmissions, they had no idea how to analyze the subprocesses between a physician writing an order on the clinic unit to it being sent to the pharmacy, entered, verified and dispensed. The solution now allows them to actually look into these subprocesses, assess orders and process them as well as manage their workforce.