Chartwell fuels home infusion and specialty pharmacy business with IV compounding solutions

With annual revenues exceeding $1.4 billion, Chartwell Pennsylvania, LP, is the region’s largest and most clinically advanced provider of home infusion, specialty pharmacy, and TPN (total parenteral nutrition) support. The company provides services, therapies, and medications for more than 15,000 patients every month in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Florida, South Carolina, and West Virginia.

Fueled by rapid market expansion, Chartwell had outgrown its primary production facility. It looked to expand its Pittsburgh-area headquarters operation into a multiple-use, showroom-quality location. The company also operates regional pharmacies in Erie and Altoona, Pennsylvania.

The challenge was in building a program to meet both current standards and anticipated future evolutions of USP <800> and USP <797> regulations—ensuring sterility for both hazardous and non-hazardous admixtures—while also aligning on process recommendations from ISMP (Institute for Safe Medication Practices). 

Explained COO David Benedict, “In order to achieve our goal of delivering high-quality medications and services, we sought the most advanced technology, integrated with best practice skill sets, and positioned within a carefully controlled environment.”

Activated Solutions 

IVX Workflow
IVX Cloud
IVX compounding robot
Pharmacy Carousel

Chartwell’s unique production design creates distinct spaces to run its operations 24 hours per day, seven days per week. These include: 

• Clean room
• Antibiotics production room
• High-risk compounding room
• Hazardous compounding room

“Accuracy and quality are primary concerns. We sought to upgrade our operations with very distinctive factors to match our clinical excellence,” said Benedict. “Partnering with Omnicell has really helped to transform our business. The technology enables us to produce high-quality medications to meet our patient needs.”

Chartwell’s Omnicell technology solution includes:

• IVX Workflow, located within laminar airflow hoods, to drive technician efficiency and proper aseptic technique using integrated barcode scanning, gravimetric and volumetric verification, advanced image recognition, photo documentation, and label printing
• IVX compounding robot to automate antibiotic production
• IVX Cloud, a web-based tool to manage order routing and workflow, and also provide access to compounding dashboards and analytics
• Carousels in the pharmacy staging area for barcode-driven drug storage and retrieval and for inventory management
• NarcStation to oversee access, control, and tracking of controlled substances

While the practice of batching dose-specific admixtures for multiple patients is normal in an acute care setting, batching is much less common in the home infusion space. 

At Chartwell, operational pharmacists work under hoods with IVX Workflow technology to accurately and effectively produce up to a week’s worth of dose-specific products for individual home infusion patients.

“The IVX Workflow technology gives us the flexibility and technology for specific-patient dosing and efficient delivery,” said Benedict. “Pharmacists are using the gravimetric, volumetric, and image technology to scrutinize every dose to ensure the right medication, the right dosing, and the right preparation is actually occurring.”

Further, Chartwell installed video cameras within each hood to monitor for standards adherence, proper aseptic technique, and training purposes.

Looking to future growth and efficiencies, Chartwell is studying its own data history and various models for the potential high-volume batch production of antibiotic syringes using its i.v.STATION compounding robots. Among its first steps is performing sterility testing for the purpose of beyond-use dating.