Ask any pharmacist that’s been around for a while and they’ll tell you about the headaches associated with faxed medication orders. I can’t tell you how inefficient a fax machine can be for order retrieval, storage and sorting. In fact, fax machines really can’t do any of that. Well, you no longer have to deal with fax machines in the pharmacy if you chose not to.
Pharmacy, or physician, order management systems like OmniLinkRx offer a software only solution designed to reduce the influx of faxed orders to the pharmacy. Not only do systems like this reduce confusion, they also reduce paper waste. I suppose that makes OmniLinkRx “green”. Consider OmniLinkRx a digital fax machine that sends the order to your computer monitor instead of a fax machine.
According to the OmniLinkRx datasheet (PDF):
“OmniLinkRx runs on a standard server with user access via workstations using Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer. Orders may be sent via analog fax and/or digital sending devices. Nurses simply place the physician order into the sending device and indicate STAT or routine. The scanned document image is sent to the OmniLinkRx server where it is immediately viewable by pharmacy for order entry. The orders can be viewed remotely.
Nurses may view the orders sent to pharmacy at any internet enabled PC and/or at Omnicell Color Touch cabinets. Nurses are able to view the status of the order to allow them to know when to expect new medications. “
Some of the features that I like about OmniLinkRx are that it is web-based, it creates an audit trail based on user annotation, it offers pre-defined and customer generated stamps, it creates bar code association of the order to the patient and it can automatically associate the patient’s name to the order based on an OmniLinkRx to ADT system interface.
The one thing I don’t like is that the OnmiLinkRx technical specifications state “Web-based application, requiring Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer 7.0 Web browser.” While I appreciate the web-based part, I would like the option to use other browsers. It may still work in other browsers like Firefox and Google Chrome, then again it might not. If you’re savvy enough you can use one of the plugins for Firefox or Google Chrome that allows you to run a native IE window inside the browser, but most IT departments frown on this type of freedom.
Overall pharmacy order management systems like OmniLinkRx offer a great advantage to acute care pharmacies. They’re especially useful with a dual monitor set-up with the pharmacy information system up on one monitor and the order management system up on the other.
With proper use this technology can decrease turn-around time, allow easier order management and create a easy method to search for and locate orders already processed. Believe me, it’s much easier to search through electronic document files than it is to rummage through 400 paper faxes.
Other pharmacy order management systems:
- POMS from Integrated Informatics
- Pyxis Connect from Care Fusion
- Siemens EDM
- InterChange from AmerisourceBergen
