For many long-term post-acute care (LTPAC) providers, the process of ordering and receiving medications can be laborious. Nurses must frequently communicate new orders for medications and the need for more supplies of existing medication orders to the pharmacy. For years, faxing was the standard communication method. Today, integration with the pharmacy vendor can offer a better solution.

In a traditional model, the nurse receives a medication order from an authorized prescriber; the order is transcribed using pen and paper or electronically into an electronic health record (EHR); and then the nurse faxes the order to the pharmacy. However, if that EHR is integrated with the pharmacy vendor, the last step of faxing the order to the pharmacy is eliminated. The elimination of faxing saves valuable time in a nurse’s busy day and reduces the possibility of the order not being received by the pharmacy due to user error or equipment malfunction such as failed faxed messages.

When a provider’s EHR is integrated with their pharmacy vendor, new medication orders and requests for additional supplies of existing medication are sent directly to the pharmacy from PointClickCare^®. The direct messaging from the EHR to the pharmacy vendor can also decrease the amount of time from when the medication order is obtained by the nurse and when the medication order is dispensed by the pharmacy. The advantages of this integration can improve the staff’s work flow for obtaining medications from the pharmacy and can expedite the process of getting patients their medications. 

Integrating your pharmacy vendor with PointClickCare has additional benefits, including:

• Real-time monitoring of the electronic messages between the pharmacy vendor and the EHR. In PointClickCare, users can see when an electronic message requesting a medication order is sent to the pharmacy and when the pharmacy sends an electronic message back to the EHR that the medication was dispensed to the provider.
• The ability to maintain electronic records of when a medication was received from the pharmacy. Questions related to when a medication was obtained by the providers often arise, and PointClickCare has reporting ability based on a particular resident and/or time range for new medication orders and requests for additional supplies of existing orders. Attempting to find out information on when a medication was obtained by the provider in a traditional model can involve numerous paper pharmacy delivery manifests which can be misplaced, lost or destroyed. Integration with the pharmacy vendor enables an enhanced ability to maintain records.

Read our Related Blog: PointClickCare’s Point of Care (POC) Experience: If It Isn’t Documented, It Didn’t Happen

PointClickCare has implemented some exciting enhancements to its integration model with pharmacy vendors, including inline eMAR receiving and auto receiving. These features can be implemented in newly integrated PointClickCare databases or previously integrated PointClickCare databases. They include:

• The inline eMAR receiving feature, which allows the nurse to receive medications in the administration in eMAR.
• The auto receiving feature, which decreases the amount of medications needing to be manually received by the provider staff. Auto receiving enables PointClickCare to attempt to match dispensed messages from the pharmacy vendor to the medication orders in PointClickCare. Auto receiving also decreases the amount of time provider staff must spend marking medications as received.

These new features can be enabled individually or together to improve the work flow of current or new PointClickCare customers that are integrated with their pharmacy vendor.