Modeling of community pharmacy dispensing process

Abstract

To improve patient's care, relevant patient's health information needs to be accessed at the decision point. When dispensing medications to patients, information about their allergies, current illnesses and other current medications constitute important information. In order to enable effective and efficient workflows and to optimally eliminate medical errors, Pharmacy Information Systems need to be reengineered to integrate with Electronic Health Records. To describe the dispensing process of community pharmacies, we have observed the work inside the pharmacy; we have also analyzed healthcare information standards and healthcare regulations. In this paper, we describe and discuss common dispensing workflows by depicting actors, tasks, routes and data model.

A Qualitative Approach to Exploring Workflow and Cost Factors of Dispensing Services in Community Pharmacies in Taiwan

“…The dispensing process outlined in the study shares similarities with the community dispensing stages introduced by Rose et al and Naybour et al 34 , 35 However, variations emerge in certain steps of dispensing services due to distinct healthcare policies and cultural context. 14 Even within the same stages, the specific tasks can differ among professionals under different healthcare schemes.…”

“…For instance, in Canada, pharmacists must obtain authorization before refilling a prescription (one medication per prescription) and are granted to approve a single renewal. 34 In contrast, the NHI MediCloud System in Taiwan permits prescription refills after pharmacist verification without additional authorization. Notably, pharmacists in Taiwan are not empowered to authorize any refill, leading to the omission of the authorization stage in our model.…”