I recently returned from the 2018 ASHP Midyear Clinical Meeting, i.e. “Midyear†in Anaheim, CA. This year was a bit different for me as it was the first time in many years that I attended the meeting as a regular pharmacist, i.e. not tied to a pharmacy automation company as an employee or as a … Read more
For almost a year, I’ve been working as a ‘Pharmacy Project Manager’ on a large healthcare system project to bring all their pharmacy sterile compounding spaces — a.k.a. Cleanrooms, SCA’s, C-SCA’s, etc. — into compliance with USP General Chapters <797> and <800>. Some areas have been remodeled while others have simply been scrapped in favor … Read more
Construction on pharmacy cleanrooms is at an all-time high in California. Every hospital I know is either renovating a sterile compounding area — cleanroom or SCA — or building a new one. Why? Because of USP General Chapter <800>, of course. Never have I seen so little cost so much. That little 19-page document has … Read more
In a notice posted last Friday, USP announced its intention to postpone the official date of USP Chapter <800> — Hazardous Drugs — Handling in Healthcare Settings. According to the notice: “The intent of this postponement is to align the official date of General Chapter <800> with the official date of the next revision of … Read more
Several years ago there was a debate over the long-time practice of having pharmacists review all medication orders prior to administration; referred to as nearly universal prospective order review (NUPOR).(1) At the heart of the debate was whether or not such a process was still relevant in the changing face of healthcare, i.e. do pharmacist … Read more
FierceHealthcare: “That’s what led them to invest in a new platform that went beyond algorithms and software to emphasize the data’s tangible impact on clinician workflow and hospital operations… Although Sutter Health has worked with the company [Qventus] on several other initiatives targeting patient throughput, the pharmacy pilot is the system’s first significant foray into … Read more
This came through one of my Google Alerts this morning. Life Pulse Health Magazine: “Pearson Medical Technologies’ [PMT] … m:Print Version 3.9.1 has been updated to use Microsoft SQL Server 2012/2014 for more efficiency and advanced performance. Each packaging run can now automatically generate a unique lot number. Most importantly, Pearson Medical has added a … Read more
Pharmacy Purchasing & Products (PP&P) puts out a survey each year called The State of Pharmacy Automation (SOPA). The 2017 PP&P SOPA is out and available for your reading pleasure. The PP&P SOPA survey covers many automation, technology, and practice trends. One item that I look at each year with great interest is the reported … Read more
I’m a little slow getting to my thoughts on this deal. A couple of weeks ago it was announced that Talyst had been acquired by Swisslog Healthcare. I’ve known about this acquisition for a while so I wasn’t surprised when it finally went through. Since the announcement, I’ve reached out to some friends and colleagues … Read more
I am currently reading an article on the use of gravimetrics in the preparation of hazardous CSPs published in the Journal of Clinical Pharmacy and Therapeutics.* The article addresses data collected from a large-scale, retrospective analysis of medication errors identified during the preparation of antineoplastic drugs, aka chemotherapy. The paper looks at 759 060 doses … Read more