The Central Fill Pharmacy (CFP) seamlessly and automatically manages orders from multiple polyclinics, as opposed to individual pharmacies manually tracking the schedules for the next refill. It provides an integrated solution that enables information flow from source system, helping to eliminate manual transcription as the system generates the prescription details, delivery address, time and generation of subsequent delivery dates automatically.
About Central Fill Pharmacy
Central Fill Pharmacy at a glance
Opportunity
The National Healthcare Group Pharmacy (NHGPh) faced a 60-fold increase in medication delivery requests during Singapore’s circuit breaker period. Packing medication for home deliveries typically takes more time than an over-the-counter sale, as staff must incorporate the delivery address and coordinate with the courier services. With the disruption of global supply chains, staff faced an increase in workload in sourcing and packing medication.
Solution
The Central Fill Pharmacy (CFP) centralises the fulfilment of medication off-site, relieving the workload at the pharmacies and allowing them to focus on caring for patients. The CFP automatically manages orders and delivery schedules, streamlining operational workflow with just-in-time picking and packing of medications. The Medication Delivery Module (MDM) embedded in the CFP manages medication fulfilment across different processing steps.
Impact
By eliminating manual workarounds and spreadsheets to maintain courier lists, it helped pharmacy staff to manage the timely supply of orders with a 100 per cent reduction in packing errors. MDM has an estimated time savings of about eight hours per 1,000 prescriptions. Overall, significant resources have been saved and productivity has increased.
Future Outlook
As CFP continues to scale up its capabilities, the system is expected to further facilitate the coordination of up to 1,500 home delivery orders per day across all NHG polyclinics next year. There are plans to automatically send SMS reminders to patients regarding the medication delivery status. This would give them ease of mind that their orders are being processed and help them to remember when the delivery days are.
