Latest Innovation in Winter 2020 Release Advances Journey to the Autonomous Pharmacy

Ken Osborn
Senior Director, Product Marketing, Omnicell

Latest Innovation in Winter 2020 Release Advances Journey to the Autonomous Pharmacy

The need for solutions designed to help customers achieve greater visibility, control costs, and better manage an increasingly complex pharmacy supply chain is more important than ever.

Omnicell’s Winter 2020 release features new functionality for automation, enhanced intelligence, and technology-enabled services designed to simplify workflows, provide deeper insights, and streamline processes. These new capabilities advance the journey to the fully Autonomous Pharmacy, supporting the goal of zero-error medication management and ultimately improved patient/clinician satisfaction.

Advances in Point of Care Automation

The operating room and perioperative settings are some of the highest cost, highest risk areas for medication management. With large gaps in inventory visibility, technology solutions are imperative to streamline provider workflow, track chain of custody, and support diversion management. New functionality for XT Anesthesia Workstation will simplify anesthesiologist workflows, improve inventory visibility and data insights for pharmacy, and enhance overall staff satisfaction and patient safety.

The OR accounts for almost 70% of hospital revenue, a critical business unit for healthcare recovery following COVID-19.   The OR also accounts for almost 40% of hospital expenses, as many of the Anesthesia drugs are the highest priced medication on a per unit basis.   On average activity within the OR costs anywhere from $50-100 per minute for surgery expenses. ¹

The Winter 2020 release includes intuitive medication reconciliation workflows designed to simplify processes and decrease time at the cabinet by up to 20%. Clinicians now have access to real-time data through an easy-to-use dashboard that gives pharmacy critical insight to accurately track and maintain “chain of custody.” Comprehensive workflows support best practices for controlled substance management and streamlined investigation and auditing processes reduce the time spent on resolving discrepancies, a leading indicator for diversion.

Enhanced Data Intelligence

One of the biggest challenges for health system pharmacy is navigating complex data across multiple, disconnected systems. Omnicell One, a technology-enabled intelligence service delivered through the cloud, provides enterprise optimization for inventory and diversion within an entire health system, through advanced analytics.

With the Winter 2020 release, Omnicell One expands inventory optimization through the addition of medication stock indicators such as Dead Stock (medication that is not being utilized), Stocked Over Max (consistent over purchasing), and Stockout Reduction (preventing a shortage of critical medication), provided through dashboards supported by clinical experts and data strategists. These indicators will result in a reduction of medication waste, and improved medication inventory turns.

Expansion of Professional Implementation and Consulting Services

Digitizing processes and improving medication management workflow is helping health system pharmacy to better manage costs and improve efficiencies, driving better outcomes and performance and allowing them to reallocate time to focus on patient care initiatives.

Enhancements to Omnicell’s Central Pharmacy Dispensing Service offering — the cornerstone of the journey to a fully autonomous central pharmacy — now include increased throughput for the Company’s groundbreaking pharmacy automation technology—the  Omnicell XR2 system—as well as a new Professional Services offering to drive organizational change management and successful adoption of technology, processes, and workflows within Central Pharmacy.

Learn more about the Winter 2020 Release here.

DISCLAIMER

The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer or company. Assumptions made in the analysis are not reflective of the position of any entity other than the author(s). These views are always subject to change, revision, and rethinking at any time and may not be held in perpetuity.