How to Leverage Technology to Achieve Closed Loop Medication Management

If your pharmacy is out-of-house, you’re all too familiar with the possibilities for breakdown in the medication management cycle.

From lack of communication to inconsistencies with paper charting, achieving a closed loop medication management cycle may seem like an unattainable goal.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

When you harness the coordinative power of technology, you can level silos, streamline charting, and connect all points of the medication management cycle, improving outcomes across your organization.

Read on to learn how you can make closed loop medication management a reality at your organization. 

Assess Organizational Pain Points

While every provider faces a unique set of challenges, there are common barriers to digitization that are pervasive across the healthcare ecosystem.

A few common pain points that plague providers throughout the prescription process include:

• Paperwork
• Staffing
• Quality

If these three challenges ring a too-familiar bell, it’s time to eliminate them once and for all by implementing technology solutions that solve these common issues.

Find the Right Solution Provider

Your choice in a technology vendor can have long-lasting impacts on every facet of your organization.

As you sift through solution offerings from different vendors, be sure to ask these three questions:

• Are all manual processes eliminated?
• Is true integration possible between your current technology and the prospective solution?
• How has the solution solved similar challenges for similar organizations?
• What are some common challenges that have arisen during implementation?

By gaining evidenced answers to these questions, you can weigh solutions, ultimately deciding which best meets your organizational needs.

Implement Technology

Implementing new technology takes buy-in from every member of your organization and is an ongoing process.

To ensure that your medication management solution implementation is as successful as possible, you must:

1. Engage Staff
2. Provide Adequate Training and Resources
3. Leverage Data to Track Success
4. Continue to Optimize

And while your new solution will help you overcome many of your most pressing challenges, be aware of common, new errors that can arise throughout the implementation process and plan accordingly for mitigatory action.

By leveraging truly integrated technology, you can connect disparate and distant systems and parties, eliminating challenges that have roadblocked closed loop medication management.