Pharmacy Newsletter – October 2023

How can RTasks help facilities stay in compliance with medications?

Medication reconciliation is important for residents’ safety and quality of care and ensures the physical medications and all formal records are the same and accurate. Medication reconciliation provides a complete medication record to all parties of the resident’s Clinical Care Team thus creating a safer and higher quality of care to the resident.

Medication reconciliation is especially important when there are multiple parties of the Clinical Care Team, such as multiple prescribers (Primary Physician/Provider, Speciality Physicians/Providers, Home Care Agency, Assisted Living, Pharmacy, etc.).

With RTasks, medication reconciliation can be completed and maintained with the use of varying features:

• Pharmacy Connect: Pharmacy → Facility 
• Pharmacy Connect Outbound Faxing: Facility → Pharmacy
• MD Orders: Facility → Prescribers

Pharmacy Connect: Pharmacy → Facility

Pharmacy Connect is a system that integrates the RTasks E-MAR with pharmacies, allowing medication orders entered by the pharmacy into their own software to be automatically transferred to RTasks for review & approval by a nurse. This can provide the facility with a number of advantages:

• Medication administrations in the RTasks E-MAR will list med names, RX numbers, etc. that match exactly what will appear on pharmacy medication labeling/packaging, helping eliminate issues that might arise at the point of care.
• Pharmacy med techs will enter the bulk of medication data, saving the facility some time.
• Every med order entered into the system will have been reviewed by both a pharmacy tech and the facility nurse, reconciling med lists and serving as an additional cross-check.
• This ensures that the pharmacy and the facility will be made aware of missed med orders earlier in the process.

Click here for detailed information about Pharmacy Connect setup and function.
Contact RTasks Pharmacy Connect strike team at pharmacyconnect@residexsoftware.com for further assistance in setting up Pharmacy Connect.

How are discontinued meds communicated to the facility?

When a pharmacy receives a discontinuation order for a medication from a party of a resident’s Clinical Care Team, faxing a copy to the facility is the most common method to communicate this change.

Pharmacy Connect: Facility → Pharmacy

How do facilities reorder meds from the pharmacy?

The Pharmacy Connect – Outbound Fax feature sends scheduled faxes to advise pharmacists of important facility data such as refill requests, rejected medications, discontinued medications, changes to orders (med times, instructions, etc.), controlled pill counts < 15, and medications placed or removed from hold.  Each pharmacy will receive a faxed report on a scheduled basis.  Faxes are sent Monday through Saturday at 8am, 10am,12pm, 2pm and 4pm.

What are the main benefits of Pharmacy Connect – Outbound Fax?

• Pharmacies will receive important information from the facility on a regular basis, using faxing (already a normal workflow process in most pharmacies). 
• Pharmacy Connect – Outbound Fax provides pharmacy staff with key insights critical to providing excellent service: refill requests, rejected or discontinued meds, etc. This may greatly improve communication between facility and pharmacy. 
• Pharmacy Connect – Outbound Faxing is a service that we provide to the pharmacy and the RTasks client at no charge.

Learn more about Pharmacy Connect.
Contact RTasks support at support@residexsoftware.com for further assistance in setting up Pharmacy Connect – Outbound Faxing.

MD Orders: Facility → Prescribers

The MD Orders report details resident demographics, allergies, diet, code status, meds, and services. This can be sent to a provider for review and signature, allowing the facility to reconcile information and ensure they are providing services in line with signed physician orders. These can be created at whatever frequency is preferred, and reminders of MD Order renewals can appear in the Login Report.

Learn more about MD Orders

Managing medications is a vital component of providing safe, quality resident care.  Pharmacy Connect provides a HIPAA-compliant, accurate way to ensure that medications are entered, ordered, and managed correctly.