BROOMFIELD, Colo.—Swisslog Healthcare, a leading supplier in healthcare technology combining pharmacy and transport automation, is sharing their best practices on how healthcare systems and facilities can follow their lead to successfully transform operations to embrace the all-digital future ahead.

Albert Karas, BSc., Phm., RPh., director of Pharmacy Services at Humber River Hospital, and Young-Shin Lee, a registered nurse with Swisslog Healthcare, reveal a roadmap for action in a “fire-side chat” they shared with an audience.

As healthcare moves towards an all-digital future, proactive organizations such as Humber River Hospital – the first hospital in North America to transition into an all-digital workflow – will invest in innovation and implement automation in places where it can assist in quality improvement, job satisfaction and labor savings. Automating tasks like pharmacy services goes beyond providing medications efficiently and accurately. It adds value to the patient, organization and staff, thereby positively impacting both clinical outcomes and financial performance.

“The goal of automation is not to replace clinicians and staff, but to help them deliver better care,” says Albert Karas, BSc., Phm., RPh., director of Pharmacy Services at Humber River Hospital. “By leveraging technology and automating more mundane and repetitive tasks, you can increase the amount of human interaction that your staff have with patients.”

Using Swisslog Healthcare pharmacy automation, Humber River Hospital reports medication picking errors have been reduced by more than 50% compared to the previously manual workflow. Additionally, inventory control has increased by approximately 30%. Both improvements mean staff engagement and commitment levels have increased as well, with many staff becoming super-users to lead process and workflow improvements. Concentrating on higher-value work has increased staff outlook and job satisfaction, which in turn has led to increased levels of service to patients.

“The future of medicine is digital, and that future is a lot closer than you might think,” says Anthony Pugliese, chief commercial officer of Medication Management at Swisslog Healthcare. “There are a lot of key lessons that hospitals and healthcare systems and facilities can learn from Humber River’s transformation into a fully digital hospital. We hope this roadmap can help others make the same transformation for efficiency.”

“As healthcare moves toward an all-digital future, organizations must prioritize their investment and prepare for implementation, which can be daunting, but it doesn’t have to be,” says Young-Shin Lee, registered nurse and regional sales director of Swisslog Healthcare Canada, Solutions Sales. She has supported hospitals to provide services and tools to achieve operational excellence and enhance the quality and safety of patient care. “Humber River Hospital is a best-in-practice example of leading the change for better care. This is an incredible opportunity to learn from them.”

This conversation is captured in the webinar “Maneuvering the Digital Transformation.” This and others like it are available to view on-demand.

Swisslog Healthcare provides integrated medication supply chain solutions to hospitals and health systems to assist providers in treating patients across the continuum of care. Integrating transport and pharmacy automation, value-added services, and intelligent software, Swisslog Healthcare enables healthcare providers to respond to patients’ needs quickly and with greater accuracy.

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Under Austin’s leadership, Swisslog Healthcare will be establishing new ways to engage its consumers. They aim to build their customer base and support customers on a long-term basis. Additionally, Austin will be a key player in Swisslog Healthcare’s plan to enhance the company by establishing a culture of accountability and an ongoing push for constant improvement.

“Don will bring innovation and a fresh perspective to Swisslog Healthcare by employing a go-to-market strategy,” says Cory Kwarta, President of Swisslog Healthcare. “Drawing on his expertise and extensive knowledge of the healthcare technology industry, we look forward to the impact he will make on our company’s continued success, and I am very excited to welcome him to the executive team.”

Austin has twenty years of experience in various sales and leadership roles for healthcare organizations, most notably serving for five years as Vice President of Medication Management Solutions at BD Medical. He has a proven reputation for helping organizations catapult to the next level by providing motivational and steady leadership that inspires teams to reach their highest performance potential.

Austin obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from the University of Georgia and has since developed an accomplished career in the sales and solutions industry. He is the recipient of multiple awards reflecting his accomplishments, such as the Vice President of the Year Award at BD Medical, Sales Excellence Award at CareFusion, Regional Vice President of the Year at McKesson, and countless others.

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BROOMFIELD, Colo.—Swisslog Healthcare, a leading global supplier of integrated solutions for medication management in healthcare environments, has announced the launch of a partnership with Summa Health to execute a pilot medication adherence program on the healthcare organization’s Akron campus.

“This unique program allows our organization to respond to the increasing demand for discharge medication delivery at the patient bedside, an essential step in supporting medication adherence”

The new meds-to-beds program includes secure, autonomous robotic delivery of prescribed medication and concierge-style medication reconciliation and consulting services conducted at the bedside in preparation for patient discharge. This new program will serve as an extension of the facility’s existing meds-to-beds initiative.

To create the innovative pilot offering, Swisslog Healthcare combines Delivery Manager, the company’s intelligent chain-of-custody software deployed in automated transport scenarios, with robotic technology from Savioke and telepharmacy services from PipelineRx.

Summa Health is a population health management organization providing compassionate care to the citizens of northeast Ohio. By executing a population health strategy that encourages wellness through preventative and personalized specialty care, Summa Health clinicians work collaboratively with patients to improve their well-being.

“This unique program allows our organization to respond to the increasing demand for discharge medication delivery at the patient bedside, an essential step in supporting medication adherence,” said Dr. David Custodio, president, Summa Health System – Akron and St. Thomas Campuses. “We believe this program will not only improve the patient experience, but also enhance patient understanding of their medication treatment plans and create convenient access to prescriptions. Just as important, it will provide peace of mind to family members who know their loved ones have the medications they need upon discharge from the hospital.”

Among the benefits the organization is expected to realize are higher degrees of patient safety related to medication use, increasing medication adherence to maximize therapy benefits, and minimizing 30-day hospital readmissions.

“This pilot partnership with Swisslog Healthcare will provide expanded capacity to deliver more medications than is possible today through the use of autonomous service robots,” said John Feucht, vice president of Pharmacy Services for Summa Health. “The program ensures patients returning home post-discharge are prepared to continue their medication therapy without disruption.”

Swisslog Healthcare North America President Cory Kwarta adds, “Swisslog Healthcare has worked with Savioke and PipelineRx for years. This new pilot program combines our strengths in transport automation and healthcare workflows with the robotics and services expertise of our partners to create a new offering that fills a real need. We envision hospital pharmacies will benefit from efficiencies in workflow and simultaneously capture more revenue from prescription fills. Patients will benefit from greater understanding of their medication therapies and increased confidence their prescriptions have been carefully reconciled. This program has all the makings for a win-win-win scenario.”

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Every twenty seconds, a carrier is dispatched within one of the 2,400 hospitals equipped with a Swisslog Healthcare TransLogic® pneumatic tube system (PTS). Three out of every ten carriers contain patient specimens destined for the laboratory for tests. Two out of every ten carriers contain medication intended for patient care areas.

The significance of reliably, swiftly and securely moving material between hospital service areas might be marginalized by some. Not by clinicians and staff.

Turnaround times, workflow efficiency, and time to treat are top of mind for them. And the PTS plays an essential role in facilitating the work tasks associated with the handoff of specimens to the Laboratory, provisioning the Emergency Department with blood products, and delivering medication necessary for patient treatment plans.

The many people who interact with the pneumatic tube system each day have a deep appreciation for the job-enhancing features of the TransLogic Nexus® station, how Xpress equipment quickly and efficiently processes high volumes of carrier traffic, and overall high levels of TransLogic PTS system availability.

By concentrating our innovation, service, and consulting capabilities on enhancing user experiences with our products, we help clinicians and caregivers deliver better care to patients. We’re continually in search of ways to equip our customers with automated transport solutions that serve the needs of facilities now and for years to come.

Pneumatic tube systems are a 30+ year investment for hospitals. Key stakeholders see their investment maximized by collaborating with the Swisslog Healthcare’s System Design Analysis (SDA) team for the purpose of choosing the optimal PTS system for a new or expanding facility or optimizing the performance of an existing system.

With more than 100 years’ experience partnering with facilities management, laboratory directors, pharmacy leaders and operations executives, the System Design Analysis team at Swisslog Healthcare provides systematic, customer-specific analytic services for new and existing pneumatic tube systems.

Many variables influence PTS system performance. Operational changes, facility growth, increased patient care services, and adherence to a routine preventative care schedule all influence system behavior. Leveraging proprietary simulation and analysis tools, the SDA team digitally recreates a customer’s unique PTS configuration and carrier traffic. They document performance including wait and transaction times, measure uptime/downtime, and test various alterations to identify opportunities for system improvement.

Once opportunities are brought to light, the SDA team reviews options with our customers for feasibility, organizational receptiveness to change, budget, and other criteria. Our analysts work to provide customers with information and recommendations designed to optimize system performance and properly position the facility to accommodate future departmental relocations, physical expansion or additions, and demand generated by additional services.

Let’s illustrate the value of an SDA consultation for a 1,200-bed teaching hospital conducting 4,400 transactions a day that has one building with an ED, blood bank and patient services. Across the street 1,500 feet away is the inpatient pharmacy and main lab. System-wide wait times averaged 83 seconds with a traditional pressure vacuum system. A combination of excessive distance between departments and high carrier volumes led facility management to seek insight and analysis from the SDA team for ways to reduce wait time and improve throughput. Simulations generated by the team helped demonstrate gains the facility could realize by implementing TransLogic Xpress technology.

After implementing Xpress, wait times were reduced by 80%, down to 15 seconds. The additional throughput capability created by converting to Xpress rose from 4,400 daily transactions to 7,500 for an increase of 3,100 carrier capacity.

When a PTS system fails to meet user needs and demand, staff commonly resorts to transporting material manually to complete necessary transport tasks. As the Xpress technology at our example facility above absorbed the additional 3,100 transactions that had previously been dispatched manually, the reduction of manual labor resulted in a savings of $13,000 per day ($4mm annually).

In this day when circumstances challenge hospitals to contain costs and eliminate waste, the return on investment for a consultation with Swisslog Healthcare’s System Design Analysis team is extremely compelling.

Find out more at Swisslog Healthcare’s website to get started.

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