What Is a Centralized Pharmacy?

Hospital patients receive medications without ever realizing that someone had to place orders for them in the hospital pharmacy. Most hospital pharmacies only serve the needs of hospital patients. Passersby can't come in and use the hospital pharmacy the way they would a drugstore or grocery store pharmacy. If a hospital has a pharmacy where people can purchase over-the-counter drugs as well as fill prescriptions, it operates separately from the main hospital pharmacy. To make internal drug supplying faster and more efficient, some hospital pharmacies use centralized pharmacy systems.

The Centralized Pharmacy System

• Some hospitals have separate pharmacies that serve specific departments, such as the intensive care units, critical care units, surgeries or internal medicine. These departments and their pharmacies are scattered throughout the hospital. This system works well in some hospitals. In other hospitals, often large ones, a centralized pharmacy system serves the myriad departments.

How Does It Work?

• The most common centralized pharmacy system is the computerized system. A computerized pharmacy system connects all departments of the hospital, giving pharmacists easy access to important information, such as other drugs prescribed to a patient during his stay in the hospital. This allows pharmacists to determine drug interaction or possible harmful side effects before filling an order.

  Once an order has been filled, depending on its form, the medication can be delivered via the "runner method" -- a person picks it up -- or via an internal tube system. Some hospitals use both methods.

Benefits of a Centralized Pharmacy

• Having all departments connected through one centralized pharmacy system improves patient care and decreases the risk of errors. Pharmacists can coordinate with doctors and nurses with less difficulty because they have access to lists of all the medications patients have received during their hospital visits. Even prescriptions filled during previous visits, including outpatient visits, appear in the centralized pharmacy database. A centralized pharmacy system also makes it easier to keep track of inventory.

Conclusion

• When you're a patient in the hospital, it's easy to take quality care for granted. Nurses seem to materialize with just the right medications in just the right doses. In some hospitals, this is because the pharmacies that dispense the medications are close at hand. In other hospitals, centralized pharmacy systems help make it possible for doctors and nurses to provide faster, more efficient care.