MEDICATION CART-FILLING TIME, ACCURACY, AND COST WITH AN AUTOMATED DISPENSING SYSTEM

Medication cart filling with an automated dispensing system was compar ed with manual cart filling with respect to personnel time, costs, and accuracy. At a 650-bed tertiary-care medical center, technician cart filling and pharmacist cart checking were timed for the existing manua l system and for the Baxter ATC-212 automated dispensing system. Subse quently carts filled with each system were checked for accuracy of dis pensing. On the basis of drugs used in the automated system over three months, drug acquisition and dispensing costs were calculated for aut omated and manual cart filling; the costs of personnel time were also compared. Daily cart filling time for technicians was significantly le ss with the automated system. The savings of pharmacist time was not s ignificant; pharmacists had to cut the strip-packaged drugs into indiv idual doses as they checked patients' medications. For both systems, e rrors were found in fewer than 1% of the doses (0.84% for the manual s ystem and 0.65% for the automated system). Drug costs were higher with the automated system; acquisition prices for the bulk drugs purchased for use in the dispensing machine were higher than the prices of the same products in unit dose packaging. Personnel time saved amounted to less than 0.5 full-time equivalent. With the automated system, overal l time savings was not great enough to substantially affect pharmacy o perations, and drug costs were higher.