Omnicell UK Shortlisted for Four Industry Awards
Omnicell UK&I are delighted to announce that they have been successfully shortlisted for four prestigious industry awards – CIPR Excellence Awards, HSJ Patient Safety Awards and two Chemist & Druggist Awards. These accolades are a testament to our commitment to improving patient safety, healthcare efficiencies and sharing best practice. They showcase Omnicell’s outstanding innovations in automated medication management systems.
CIPR Excellence Awards: Public Affairs Campaign of the Year – The SAFE (Safeguarding Against Frontline Errors) campaign was launched following the publication of a report by the Policy Research Unit in Economic Evaluation of Health and Care Interventions (EEPRU) in February 2018 which estimated 237 million medication errors occur each year.
The Public Affairs campaign included three White Papers and Standards of Care brochures for care homes, pharmacies and hospitals, and a Health Summit for MPs which heard industry professionals and MPs discussing the importance of eradicating medication errors. The campaign also saw MPs and advisors to the Secretary of State for Health visiting hospitals to see Omnicell systems in use. The media coverage reached 71,000,000 people.
Following the campaign work, in November 2017 the Department of Health announced £78m of funding for 13 Trusts for medication administration systems, akin to Omnicell’s product range, as well as ePMA systems. The Department of Health has also promised further funding for such technology in 2019.
HSJ Patient Safety Awards: Best Health Tech Solution for Patient Safety – Omnicell UK and Chesterfield Royal Hospital NHS Foundation Trust worked on a joint project to ensure the safe and efficient management of medicines on the wards. This initiative saw Chesterfield Royal Hospital Foundation Trust harness Omnicell’s dispensary automation with ward-based medicine systems, integrated with electronic prescribing, to reduce the risk of error and increase efficiency.
The systems aimed to provide a step towards ‘closed loop’ prescribing and administration with each step in the medicines management process subject to technological support – providing a real safety net for over stretched pharmacy and nursing staff. The benefits that have been realised include:
- A reduction in the amount of nursing time spent on managing medication
- Releasing pharmacy capacity to focus on medicines optimisation
- Significantly minimising the stock-holding of ward medicines
- Improved patient care and experience
- Significant time and financial savings for the Trust
Chemist & Druggist: Business Initiative of the Year – Pearl Chemist Group consists of 14 independent pharmacies and provides medication adherence pill packs to patients with complex medication regimes to help ensure that patients are taking the right dose of the right drug at the right time. The medication adherence packs were filled manually by staff across all the branches, significantly reducing the time skilled staff spent giving over the counter care to patients.
In December 2017, Pearl Chemist Group invested in an Omnicell VBM 200F to manually fill and accurately check medication adherence packs, this has been so successful that they have invested in a second machine. The machine is able to accurately fill 40 packs per hour and takes the Pharmacist a few seconds to check the packs rather than the 10 minutes it was taking before. Previously, the pharmacy team’s time was taken up by preparing blister packs and now they are embracing and utilsing their clinical skills by advising and consulting with patients. This is providing the opportunity for staff to develop their clinical skills. Pearl Chemist Group is now a reference site for the Omnicell VBM 200F meaning they are sharing best practice with other pharmacies globally.
RB Healthcare Ltd and Scorah Chemist consists of four independent pharmacies and provides a range of services, particularly to care homes, meaning they understand the importance of safe medication administration and recognise the challenges and time constraints facing care home managers and care staff.
RB Healthcare Ltd decided to digitalise their Managed Care Services in order to make themselves more efficient and improve patient safety. Working with Borough Care Group, they installed Omnicell eMAR, a system which uses patient specific barcoding to automate the entire care home medication management and administration process, making it safe, simple and compliant for everyone involved. The system was piloted at one of Borough Care homes. Following on from this successful pilot two years ago, Omnicell eMAR has since been rolled out across the remaining homes. The staff at the homes feel that the process of administrating medication is now much safer as the system provides a simple alert and verification system, meaning the risk of a medication error has been significantly reduced.
