X
- No products in your cart.
X
- No products in your cart.
Correctional facilities face significant challenges in healthcare delivery, especially when it comes to administering medication.
Correctional healthcare is plagued by severe staffing shortages and a high turnover rate. Recent surveys by the National Commission on Correctional Health Care (NCCHC) have shown that about 70% of correctional agencies consistently have an inordinately high rate of healthcare position vacancies.
Staffing shortages create an environment rife with inefficiencies, points of failure, and the potential for medication errors. This significantly impacts patient health and safety and has a detrimental effect on correctional institution operations. When an institution is short-staffed, overtime hours increase, services are cut, and security concerns escalate. Unfortunately, these issues often compound upon themselves as frustrated employees resign, putting more strain on the system. Critical staffing shortages have led to tragic incidents of inmates not receiving the healthcare services they need, resulting in acute medical emergencies, or even death. These errors not only compromise patient safety, but they can also lead to costly legal action.
To complicate matters further, most correctional institutions receive inmate medications packaged in 30-day blister packs. On-site staff must then punch out the medications needed for each patient daily. This entirely manual process requires a significant time commitment, wholly focused on ensuring each patient’s medication is correctly prepped and accounted for.
With Capsa Healthcare’s NexPak™ automated packaging solution, correctional institutions can simplify medication management, remove repetitive and error-prone tasks from healthcare staff workloads, and improve patient safety.
Jeannie Vaughn, Health Service Administrator at Macon County Jail (GA), like many other correctional healthcare administrators, is concerned about her staff’s time and resources. “Manpower is always first and foremost on my mind,” she says. She has “several nurses who spend a greater part of their day on packaging medications for tomorrow’s med pass.” This preparation often consumes a full shift, reducing time available for direct patient care.
“We have about 850 inmates, with 8 or 10 nurses on each shift. We could absolutely use those 2 nurses that are spending almost all day doing med prep and move them out to the patient care areas to provide better patient care for our inmates”
Vaughn also worries about medication errors and liability related to administering medication to inmates. “Correctional facilities have a transient population,” she says. “Patients move in, out, and around the facility rapidly.”
In this dynamic environment, preparing and delivering medication becomes a minefield of potential mistakes, even for the most conscientious and well-trained staff. “Most nurses are very good. They’re efficient, they’re fast, they don’t make mistakes, they’re dedicated. But it is still a manual process with hundreds of patient orders to be completed quickly, and accurately.”
Tiffany Sheffield, Clinical Coordinator at Correct Health in Eastman, GA, agrees. “We have 2 nurses on each shift who are focused largely on the next day’s med pass,” she says.
“They are packaging medications over and over and over. I estimate that takes 12 hours combined for those two nurses—almost their entire day,” Sheffield continues. Having two nurses per shift tied up sorting and prepping medications renders two highly skilled, well-trained resources unavailable for patient care. That deeply impacts Sheffield’s team and the overall health and well-being of patients.
“We have about 850 inmates, with 8 or 10 nurses on each shift” she says. “We could absolutely use those 2 nurses that are spending almost all day doing med prep and move them out to the patient care areas to provide better patient care for our inmates.”
NexPak offers a streamlined, automated solution to address the enormous amount of time nurses and other staff spend sorting and preparing medications. NexPak is stationed directly in the facility’s medication room and runs automated workflows to produce patient-specific multi-dose medication packets, which are prepared on demand and ready to be delivered directly to patients.
Vaughn estimates an automated system like NexPak could handle as much as 80% of the medication prep work currently assigned to her nursing staff. Sheffield also believes automation would result in immediate time savings. “A workflow with NexPak right at the facility prepping the next day’s meds automatically would eliminate so much manual processing,” she says.
The traditional 30-day punch card system for medication delivery has several drawbacks. Perhaps the most critical is the opportunities it creates for medication errors. Vaughn points out that prepping meds from punch cards has a built-in time gap that can cause problems.
“[It] challenges the preparation of medications when nurses are working off 30-day cards,” she says. “So, if nurses are preparing for the next morning and patients are moving—with a time gap like that, it leaves plenty of opportunities for a med error to occur.”
Punch cards also inhibit providers’ ability to keep patients informed about their medication. Vaughn, once again: “When a nurse is passing out medications to patients, another nurse may have prepared that batch the day ahead. So, if a patient has a question about what medications she or he is taking, that nurse handling the administration is in an awkward position … NexPak would address all that. Every dose is spelled out, right there on the packet’s printing, exactly what’s in that little convenient packet.”
A massive advantage of an automated system is the efficiency it introduces. Skilled employees are expensive. When correctional healthcare workers spend a significant amount of time manually sorting, preparing, and delivering medication, the costs add up quickly.
As Vaughn points out, other factors like liability concerns, safety issues, and supply costs factor into the cost-benefit analysis. “Everything comes down to budget,” she says. “But NexPak looks like an easy way to justify the cost vs. benefits. When you look at the combined manpower, liability, safety, and roll those all into an ROI calculation, the cost of the system would be offset pretty quickly.”
The NexPak Automated Pouch Packaging System offers an innovative solution to the challenges faced by correctional facilities in medication management. By automating medication dispensing within facilities, NexPak significantly reduces manual labor, enhances patient safety, and improves workflow efficiency.
NexPak uses advanced automation technology to dispense each medication in a clearly labeled pouch, which is sealed and ready to be delivered to the patient. This drastically reduces the potential for medication errors. And, because each medication pouch is labeled with the patient’s information and the medication details, the process is transparent. Nurses or other providers distributing medication can quickly answer patient questions or allay their concerns.
Automation removes most of the drudgery from med prep. Instead of nurses manually sorting punch cards, pills, and medicine containers, they are free to focus on patient care. This not only conserves resources, but it can also impact burnout and frustration, as nursing staff members are able to spend their workday delivering care rather than completing tedious administrative tasks.
“NexPak looks like an easy way to justify the cost vs. benefits. When you look at the combined manpower, liability, safety, and roll those all into an ROI calculation, the cost of the system would be offset pretty quickly.”
NexPak is a flexible, scalable solution. With customizable options for varying facility sizes, it fits seamlessly into diverse correctional healthcare environments. Because NexPak packages medication on-demand, it is supremely flexible to align with correctional facilities’ dynamic needs. As patients move between areas of the facility or transfer to different facilities, the system can be easily adjusted to ensure medications get to the right patient with minimal waste and fewer opportunities for error or diversion.
Improving medication administration processes directly enhances patient safety. A focus on patient safety is crucial in correctional healthcare settings, where the environment can contribute to errors. NexPak helps facilities reduce errors and improve health outcomes for incarcerated individuals. NexPak offers a comprehensive solution to the pressing issues of staffing shortages and inefficient medication delivery systems in correctional healthcare.
By adopting NexPak, facilities can improve efficiency, reduce costs, and, most importantly, enhance patient safety.