Leaders at Watermark Retirement Communities knew what all senior housing operators know: when it comes to care outcomes, every minute matters. That’s especially true at scale. When one community is spending more time than necessary on a constant task such as pharmacy order management or system training, chances are all communities are too.
For Watermark, the solution was streamlining their medication management with PointClickCare’s Pharmacy Connect.
The outcome? A reduction of order management time by 40% and training time by 90%, while enhancing collaboration with pharmacies and ensuring timely, safe care for residents.
That was music to Watermark’s ears. Yet there was a second benefit to Pharmacy Connect that Watermark was perhaps not thinking about when they made the move: inventory management for controlled substances. That new feature recently became available for customers on Pharmacy Connect.
“PointClickCare is very supportive, and very thorough in their implementations,” says Jennifer Geis, System Analyst, Clinical Informatics at Watermark Retirement Communities. “I have nothing but positive experiences with our implementation teams. They’re very committed to making things right. They’ll quickly hop on a call to support us.”
Here is a look at the major benefits that Watermark has seen.
Six major benefits that Pharmacy Connect brings Watermark
The situation was as simple as it was critical: Watermark was facing inefficiencies in their workflows, particularly during the medication confirmation and supply management process, which involved significant time reconciling supplies with orders. Furthermore, their controlled substances tracking processes were all on paper, often leading to shortcuts and missed shift counts.
“Our inventory management for controlled substances lived in a community, and our regional leadership and our corporate leadership lack visibility because they are not in the community,” Geis says.
The benefits with Pharmacy Connect were significant, including:
- Simplified medication management workflows
- Increased visibility for pharmacy into the actions in the community
- Reduced paper, fax and follow-up communications
- Decreased staff burden with simple training and quick onboarding
- Elimination of paper documentation and increased narcotic inventory security with inventory management for controlled substances
“From a risk perspective, when we have medication errors, Pharmacy Connect really helps us investigate and troubleshoot quickly and more deeply and more precisely,” Geis says.
As Geis notes, PointClickCare is not the only company with these pharmacy integration capabilities. What makes them unique, she says, is market share.
“What I hear from our pharmacy partners is that because PointClickCare is a very established, very large vendor, that makes it easier for pharmacies,” she says. “Pharmacies see that with more of their clients on the same EHR, the economies of scale are much better.”
Ending duplicate orders, easy dashboards and improved controlled substance management
When Geis looks at the impact that Pharmacy Connect is having on Watermark, she sees three big areas.
“The ability to merge orders has the biggest value-add for our teams,” she says. “Before, there was an extra step to have to go in and discontinue a different order rather than just merge them and then pick what data you want in the active order.”
That leads to the second major area of impact: the power of easy-to-read dashboards. “Because of the way that they handle community-entered and facility-entered orders — meaning potentially duplicate orders — we can reduce a lot of time there,” she says. “Besides the better look and feel, I think one of the big satisfiers for our frontline staff is the elimination of supply management.”
Lastly, as noted, the ability to manage controlled substances has been a game-changer for Watermark.
“That’s a huge satisfier, because we can move away from the paper and have better visibility into our narcotic inventory and shift counts,” she says. “Leadership has much greater confidence in the precision of our controlled substance inventories.”
Pharmacy Connect provides medication-related notifications including alerts for medication warnings and notifies the pharmacy when status changes occur, keeping records synchronized between the senior living community and pharmacy.
Add it all up, and residents receive the correct and optimal medications for their needs at the right time, avoiding duplication or drug interactions and keeping them safe, healthy and happy.
This Views is sponsored by PointClickCare. To learn more about Pharmacy Connect, click here.
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