West Moreton Health improved medication safety for mental health consumers in the first full year of using a new medication packaging machine at The Park – Centre for Mental Health.
Executive Director for Mental Health and Specialised Services Rachel Phillips said West Moreton Health installed an Automated Tablet Prepacking (ATP) system in March 2018 to dispense about 1500 medications daily for consumers at The Park, including its high-secure population.
“The machines are operated and accessed by trained pharmacy technicians in secure areas,” Ms Phillips said.
“Automated prepacking saves a significant amount of time and reduces high labour costs and the risk of medication dispensing errors.”
From 2014 until 2018, contractors were used to package medications offsite for distribution at The Park.
The ATP system has allowed West Moreton Health to return to providing medication distribution services in-house.
ATP creates individually packed and labelled medication pouches at a rate of about one individual dose packet per second.
The new ATP system streamlines the distribution of medication in-house, resulting in cost savings, less medication wastage, and no transport costs. It supplies medication to five prisons as part of Prison Health Services and The Park - Centre for Mental Health.
West Moreton Health staff now control the medication supply chain process. This time saving allows medical and nursing staff to redirect their clinical services to front-line needs, Ms Phillips said.
Ms Phillips said the cost of medication and packaging had dropped from more than $2 a sachet to less than 60 cents.
“We are now able to make responsive medication changes, some on the same day, which is a major change from the previous system with contractors requiring up to two weeks to make prescription changes, sort them and ship them,” she said.
Director of Pharmacy at The Park Mr Bashir Ally who oversaw the purchase and installation of the ATP machine, said feedback from Prison Health and pharmacy staff had been positive.
“Sachet packaging is vital to medication compliance and patient wellbeing, significantly reducing the time it takes to pack medications and reducing the chance for human error,” he said.
“This method allows for the delivery of a cost effective, first-class service with the capacity to further expand the services with minimal cost.”
Pharmacist John Nguyen, who is responsible for the daily operation of the ATP machine, said once the pouches were generated, they were electronically inspected to ensure that the right pill is in the right pouch for the right patient. This is done using a 12-point electronic prescription verification system.
This paperless system provides user tracking for every step of the process.