A long-term care pharmacy is a pharmacy that provides services to residential, skilled care, and/or therapeutic facilities. Different from a retail pharmacy, a long-term care pharmacy generally maintains longer hours, provides consultative services, and meets different Federal and state regulations to service residential facilities. As a long-term care pharmacy, Phoebe Pharmacy provides medication infusion, education, consulting, and other services for patients within the long-term care facilities we service.

Through our partnership with Framework, Phoebe Pharmacy is able to provide bi-directional communication via an HL7 or NCPDP SCRIPT standard interface, which can connect with various electronic health records. Framework interfaces with PointClickCare, Matrixcare, Eldermark, HealthMEDX, Tabulapro and many others.

Phoebe Pharmacy supports physician order entry as well as a nurse-initiated model. Most of our facilities choose to utilize a model where pharmacists enter facility medication orders. This allows pharmacists to complete a prospective drug utilization review prior to orders being charted, preventing medication irregularities resulting from therapeutic duplications, drug interactions, or drug-allergies. In addition, pharmacists determine which National Drug Code (NDC) should be used, based on inventory. This immediate identification of medication brand availability eliminates the rework that would come from a facility submitting an order through the electronic health record with a non-stocked item. In addition, pharmacists take into account the pharmacy’s filling and delivery schedule and the facility’s pass times, as well as the contents of the facility’s automated remote dispensing system so that first doses can be properly scheduled to assure compliance with Long Term Care regulations. Phoebe Pharmacy’s pharmacist initiated model assures a high standard of care and patient safety.

Phoebe Services Pharmacy pharmacists and drivers are available 24 hours a day, 7 days per week, 365 days per year. We partner with Cubex, an automated dispensing system placed in your facility for first doses and emergencies. The medications are contained in individual locking cells called Cubies to provide full accountability of medication movement between the pharmacy and the facility. The greatest benefit of Cubex over other vendors is the interface between Cubex and Framework, our pharmacy software, allowing the resident information and medication profile to be pushed from the pharmacy to the facility through an HL7 interface. This feature improves workflow efficiency for nursing while increasing medication safety. With Cubex, a new medication cannot be removed for a resident unless the clinical drug utilization review is completed first by the pharmacist. Controlled substances are handled with an additional layer of security thereby reducing the risk of diversion in the facility. There are many configurations of Cubex drawers and footprints of devices available for you to choose from to best suit your organizations’ needs.

Maintenance oral solids are cycled automatically in 7-day supplies in packets or depending on facility preference. The packets are clearly labeled with resident name, facility name, floor, room, physician, administration date, administration time, day of the week, quantity of medication contained in packet, name of medication, complete description of medication including dosage form, shape, color, markings, pharmacy information. After careful evaluation of available dispensing systems, we chose this model as the optimal one to support our own facilities as well as our external facilities with the medication nurse in mind. All packets are checked by a registered Pharmacist prior to leaving the pharmacy. After checking, the cycles are separated and individually rolled to allow for easy restocking in the medication cart.

Our pharmacy provides IV fluids, premixed IV medications, IV antibiotics, and IV Smartpumps with pre-loaded libraries. IV products requiring compounding are mixed by our staff of credentialed pharmacists in our class 10,000 clean room. Cleaning, tracking of serial numbers and preventative maintenance is performed on each IV pump in the pharmacy after the course of therapy is completed. Our IV pumps are equipped with tracking devices to assure that they are returned to the pharmacy for cleaning and quality checks after each use.