Long Term Care Pharmacy
What is Long-Term Care?
Long-term care is a variety of services that includes medical and non-medical care to people who have a chronic illness or disability. Long-term care helps meet health or personal needs. Most long-term care is to assist people with support services such as activities of daily living like dressing, bathing, and using the bathroom. Long-term care can be provided at home, in the community, in assisted living or in nursing homes. It is important to remember that you may need long-term care at any age.
You may never need long-term care. This year, about nine million men and women over the age of 65 will need long-term care. By 2020, 12 million older Americans will need long-term care. Most will be cared for at home; family and friends are the sole caregivers for 70 percent of the elderly. A study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says that people who reach age 65 will likely have a 40 percent chance of entering a nursing home. About 10 percent of the people who enter a nursing home will stay there five years or more.
How does Hartzell's Pharmacy provide LTC?
Hartzell's Pharmacy provides pharmacy, medical equipment, supply, and consultative services to several assisted living facilities, personal care, and group homes in the Lehigh Valley. We have designed our dispensing systems with multiple checkpoints to prevent adverse drug interactions and maintained customized medication records for our client facilities. Hartzell's Pharmacy provides consultant pharmacists who conduct on-site drug regimen reviews for each resident, assessing the efficacy of drug therapies and often providing recommendations to medication regimens resulting in improved overall patient care. We offer an array of other services that include various blister packaging systems, such as cycle filling and medication adherence packaging, pharmacist counseling, liaison with physicians' offices, door to door delivery, and emergency pharmacist support 24 hours a day and 365 days a year.
Hartzell's Pharmacy offers:
- Multiple daily deliveries
- Customized medication packaging
- Participation in most Medicare Part D plans
- Proprietary systems and technology
- Customized reports, forms, and billing
- Prescription document imaging system
- Transition support and training
- Ongoing on-site training for facility staff
- Educational industry specific seminars
- Strong participation in fund raising and charitable facility events
Just call our friendly staff and we will be happy to provide more information!
Packaging Systems
Hartzell's offers numerous packing systems that can meet the need of any organization, their staff, and their patients. Dispill, blister cards, and vials are available and in some cases can be customized to meet the needs of each organization.
Dispill
Dispill is an innovative, cold-sealed, patented multi-dose packaging system that makes it easy to manage and take medication.
Dispill packaging system
Each Dispill blister can be removed from the packaging to easily accommodate leave of absences from the facility.
Hartzell's brought Dispill into service in November of 2011 as another packaging system option. It has quickly grown to be one of our most popular packaging systems in both facilities and patients aging at home in the community.
Each Dispill pack is made up of 28 individual blisters containing a person's prescribed medication for a specific time and date. Blister packs are personalized according to each patient's prescribed medication. The individual blisters are individually labeled with the patient's name, date and time, and medications contained. They are easy to open and can be detached from the card for easy portability.
The top of each individual blister pack lists the person's name, the medication within and the time it should be taken. The cards are even color-coded for the time of day medications should be taken(yellow for the morning, white for afternoon, orange for evening, and blue forbedtime).
Dispill can be provided using a short fill cycle or a standard 28 day fill cycle depending on the needs of the facility.
Blister Cards
Calendar card used to unit dose medications by hour of administration.
Hartzell's also offers blister card packaging systems. All of our blister cards are packaged unit dosed, so their is only one medication per card.
Calendar Cards: Calendar cards are packaged on a 28 or 30 day cycle with 1 medication per card. There may be more than 1 tablet per bubble if the patient is suppose to take 2 tablets at a given hour of administration and the size of the medication allows. Each card represents one administration time, so a medication that needs to be taken three times a day would have three cards - a morning, evening, and bedtime card. The cycle is automatically delivered to the facility or patient 48-72 hours prior to the start of the next cycle.
Count Down Cards: Count down cards are used for all of our non-cycled medications (basically anything not delivered on the cycle). They are actually the same cards we use for our Calendar Cards. We have cards that can accommodate up to 30, 60, or 90 units in a single card. For our facilities using our calendar card packaging system, these cards are also packed by administration time to keep things consistent. Count down cards are the cards we use for facilities that do not want their medications cycled, would rather order them on demand, and prefer a more “unit dosed” approach.
Policy on Returns and Credits
Forms
- Resident Intake Form and Agreement
- Credit Card Authorization Form
- Facility to Pharmacy Communication Form
- Verbal Telephone Order Form
- WebConnect Facility Agreement
- WebConnect End User Agreement
WebConnect
QS/1's WebConnect is an easy-to-use tool that provides pharmacy-facility connectivity, providing web access to pharmacy information right from the nurses' station. WebConnect saves time, increases efficiency and productivity, and allows the pharmacy to share information directly with the facility.
Authorized facility employees will have the ability to look up patients and view profiles, order new or refill medications online, maintain ancillary orders, access clinical information online, and print forms - including temporary MARs.
Hartzell's launched WebConnect in late 2011. If you would like to have your facility authorized to use WebConnect or would like more information on this innovative product, contact Vince.
