That’s what Kurt Wyant reported to Healthcare Analytics News when they ran an article on his St. Joseph, MI outpatient pharmacy. Mr. Wyant oversees both outpatient and inpatient clinics at Lakeland Health. And was happy to share the findings of using automation at their busy facility. Mr. Wyant assumed his pharmacy’s use of the Kirby Lester KL60 robotic prescription filling device was making the pharmacy more efficient. But in preparing for the interview, he ran the numbers. And even he was impressed.
- Kirby Lester KL60 pharmacy robot installed in 2015
- Expected ROI: 2 years
- Actual ROI: 11 months
- Total time to fill Rx’s before KL60: 6-10 minutes; Daily Rx volume 225-240
- Total time to fill Rx’s after KL60: 3-4 minutes; Daily Rx volume 300+
- KL60 now fills 65% of total daily orders
- Significant inventory savings
Not all improvements are measurable with a spreadsheet, but Mr. Wyant reports two critical quantifiable results.
First, using a pharmacy robot has decreased errors. “It eliminates a lot of gaps and holes that, in the past, could have been problems. The error rates have dropped dramatically. With medications in the same class, tablet form versus a capsule form, you can make a mistake and pick the wrong formulation. The Kirby Lester robot doesn’t allow that to happen, it’s NDC-driven, so the wrong med can’t get to the wrong patient. We’re more of central fill for a lot of areas now, and we’ve reached out to the community and other businesses and said ‘We’d love to partner with you, and we can take your business because we can accommodate it.’ “
Second, using the KL60 pharmacy automation has freed up his staff to be more patient-centric. “Since it handles 65% of our total daily orders, it allows us to actually spend more time with the patients and do counseling in the outpatient setting. Immunization offerings were always a concern since they take a lot of time during busy days. Now we are offering more immunizations and our pharmacists are still able to fill scripts on time, and it’s allowed us to do more medication therapy management (MTM) and consultation. We are able to have more in-depth conversations and actually ask how the medication is helping our patients, if they are having any concerns or side effects, because we are gaining so much time that we did not have previously.”
More about the Kirby Lester KL60 robot: https://capsahealthcare.com/product/kl60-dispensing-robot