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August 25, 2009 By Elaine Rundle
Corrections departments are responsible for so many burdensome tasks that many of their everyday functions, like administering prescription drugs to inmates, are afterthoughts for the public. However, dispensing medication was so laborious and wasteful for the San Bernardino County (Calif.) Sheriff-Coroner Department that officials sought a way to streamline the process. The end product was essentially a vending machine that links to correctional facility databases and dispenses prescription medications.
San Bernardino County -- the largest county by area in the United States -- has seven correctional facilities scattered across its more than 20,000 square miles. Terry Fillman, health services supervisor of the county sheriff's West Valley Detention Center, said at one of the locations it took four nurses -- each working four hours every day -- to prep medicine for delivery to prisoners. The time-intensive process also generated medical waste because inmates might be moved between facilities or released during the time it took to prepare their medications, which left some prescriptions unused.
Pharmaceutical regulations require that if medication is prepared for a patient and he or she can't be reached, it's deemed undeliverable and must be destroyed. The leftovers are typically flushed down the toilet or incinerated. Also, many medications are packaged in 30-count blister packs that are prescribed for individual patients and must be disposed of if that person no longer needs the medicine or is released from the correctional facility.
The county corrections department needed a streamlined process to save time and decrease waste, so it teamed up with its pharmacy system to find a solution that would benefit both entities. The result was an automated system composed of software that connects directly to the pharmacy and dispenses medications on a per-patient basis.
"One of the corrections-specific things that was pretty much eluding everybody was if the patient moves in the time period from when you prepare the medications to the time period you deliver them, then you have an enormous percentage that are undeliverable -- waste," Fillman said. He estimated that the county delivers 1.5 million pills to inmates annually. Although the corrections department didn't track the amount of medicine that had to be disposed of, Fillman said it was an enormous amount.
You may use or reference this story with attribution and a link to
http://www.govtech.com/health/California-County-Uses-Medication-Dispensing-Machine-in.html
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At first this seemed crazy. But after reading this story I'm curious whether other counties are exploring something similar.
At first this seemed crazy. But after reading this story I'm curious whether other counties are exploring something similar.
At first this seemed crazy. But after reading this story I'm curious whether other counties are exploring something similar.