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Unit-dose repackaging is here to stay. Whether your hospital or health system pharmacy packages in-house or outsources with a unit-dose repackaging company, there are always questions about how to best manage or streamline the process. With that in mind, Safecor Health has compiled the 10 most frequently asked questions our team receives about how to maximize efficiency, safety and costs with unit-dose repackaging.

Identifying the Problem and Facing the Challenge Head-On

In October 2006, the American Hospital Association invited key medical professionals together to discuss patient safety risks associated with enteral feeding systems. The challenge involved the problems with enteral misconnections and small-bore connectors.

Workforce shortages are nothing new to the pharmacy industry. In 2016, The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics projected a 12% increased demand for pharmacy technician jobs.

Expiration dating starts as early as the FDA application process. The FDA requires new drug applicants to submit drug stability testing data along with recommended expiration dates and storage conditions at the same time they apply for FDA approval.

In the ever-changing hospital pharmacy environment, regulatory bodies and industry organizations like the Federal Drug Administration (FDA), American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP), United States Pharmacopeia (USP) and Institute For Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) are making an effort to standardize guidelines for barcoding, unit-dose packaging and expiration dating. Clear standards of practice have shown reduced medication errors resulting in improved patient safety.

In its simplest form, unit-dose repackaging means placing every individual medication dose into its own package, labeled and bar-coded. The pharmacist must repackage a bulk shipment of drugs (for example, a bottle of 100 tablets) into 100 separate doses. Sound simple? Maybe, but think about everything that’s involved in that process.

Unit-dose medication packaging has been a standard practice for hospital pharmacies since the late 1960s. Since then, pharmaceutical manufacturers and wholesalers have consolidated, resulting in fewer unit-dose drugs being available to hospital pharmacies. This directly caused price increases on unit-dose products, frequent backorders and more limited options.

In today’s health care environment, it’s important to ensure that patients get the best care possible. This can include spending time with the patient to understand his or her needs. It also includes prescribing, dispensing and administering the right drug in the right dose at the right time.

How Beverly Hospital discovered an annual cost savings opportunity of more than $200,000.

Beverly Hospital, a small community health system with three hospitals and 340 beds, discovered a new strategy for reducing drug purchasing costs and increasing operational efficiency by collaborating with Yankee Alliance, a regional group purchasing organization (GPO), and Safecor Health, an FDA-registered unit-dose repackaging vendor.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) now requires that manufacturers change their product labels from international units (IU) to metric units of measurement — micrograms (mcg) or milligrams (mg). This comes as a result of the FDA’s final rule, “Food Labeling: Revision of the Nutrition Supplement Facts Labels,” published on May 27, 2016.

Pharmacies can expect to start seeing these label changes come through on all over-the-counter (OTC) fat-soluble vitamin A, D and E products. We understand that this change can be difficult when trying to determine the metric equivalent for IUs. For a safer transition to metric labeling, Safecor Health will begin including both the IU and metric measurements on its labels, when possible.