Integrating Patient Flow and Pharmacy services

In many hospitals, requests for Pharmacy services are made via paper forms. Can integrating patient flow and Pharmacy services deliver better results?

Not only are medication requests often made using paper forms, but medication details are often recorded in patients’ paper notes. The result is that the process is often reliant on phone calls. The Pharmacy team may even be making daily visits to wards to see if any patients require their support.

This approach takes up valuable staff time, can lead to errors, reduces visibility, and it can even delay patient discharges. Integrating patient flow and pharmacy teams provides the information and visibility needed to be proactive and more effective.

A real-time view of patient flow for the Pharmacy team

The ExtraMed Patient Flow solution presents all the relevant information in a patient list view. It provides visibility of all pharmacy and medication review requests and can be sorted by the request date or the Estimated Discharge Date. Jobs can be prioritised better, and the system allows for allocation to a specific team member. The current status of a pharmacy request is also visible across the patient flow system – on the ward, with the discharge team, even in social or community care.

Save time, improve resources and improve care

Ultimately, integrating patient flow and pharmacy services helps to save time, optimise resources and improve the quality of care for patients. As well as improving the discharge process, it also reduces the chance of a request being missed or over-allocated.

Key features for Pharmacy teams

• Sortable view of all patients across the hospital who need Pharmacy services
• Real-time view of workload and priorities
• Better resources management with team members able to plan their day based on patient needs and locations
• Improves patient safety with tasks sorted on request date or patient’s EDD
• Out-of-the-box reports to identify patients who have not had their medication reconciled or clinically checked
• Real-time information allows teams to work from anywhere in the hospital
• Provides transparency and shared view of patient’s needs
• Tasks can be updated from anywhere in the hospital, and shared visibility keeps ward staff up-to-date with progress

Promotes clinical excellence with visual indictors when tasks have breached SLAs