The latest new tech is going to Maimonides Medical Center, which recently filed to replace its old drug-dispensing robot with two new ones for $8.1 million. A vast majority of medications for patients admitted to Maimonides – roughly 80% – are dispensed by a robot, according to the system’s director of pharmacy and assistant vice president of pharmaceutical services Dr. Jason Brady. The new machinery will come with a 1,000-square-foot renovation of the facility’s pharmacy, according to a filing with the state.
Here’s how it works: A computer sends an order for meds to the robot, which measures them out and drops them into an envelope. A technician picks up the dispensed medication, which is verified by a pharmacist before it is delivered to the nursing unit to be administered to the patient. At every step of the way, a barcode is scanned to ensure the packets' contents and trajectory.
Major hospital systems around the city have adopted similar systems.
New York-Presbyterian has pharmacy robots in its Queens and Brooklyn Methodist hospitals that spit out medications like a vending machine, said Vice President and Apothecary-in-Chief Dr. Patrice Dupart. Technicians are still needed to fill the robot, an approximately 16-foot cabinet with mechanical arms and fingers, and deliver them to nurses, she said.
Not a Modern Healthcare subscriber? Sign up today.
The technology improves the quality and safety of drug delivery and frees up staff time for more clinical work, said Dr. Susan Mashni, chief pharmacy officer and senior vice president of pharmacy services at Mount Sinai Health System, which uses robots to dispense common drugs and more specialty – and caustic – medicines like chemotherapy treatments.
“It’s somewhat of a breakeven because it takes staff to actually man the machine,” she said. But it does help meet regulations around cleanliness and exposure and reduces the wear on technicians.
Injuries from repetitive acts, like filling a pill bottle, were not uncommon in the pharmacy before many of the functions were automated, Mashni said. Even more risky was the preparation and transfer of radioactive chemicals used in oncology.
“Gone are the days where chemotherapy or infusions are getting made at the bedside,” she said.
The shift towards pharmacy automation has unfolded over the past decade in New York. SBH Health System renovated its pharmacy in 2011 for $20 million to focus on adding emerging robotic tech, said Senior Vice President of Clinical Support Services and Chief Pharmacy Officer Dr. Ruth Cassidy. Now, robotics are heavily integrated into SBH Health System’s pharmacy from automated dispensing to a machine that prepares IV bags. The move has allowed the system to redeploy staff, shifting at least five pharmacists from the dispensing floor to a new clinical department, she said.
This story first appeared in Crain's New York Business.
