Telepharmacy Helps Rural Utah Hospital Fill Prescriptions, Save Money

The Salt Lake Tribune on Nov. 14 profiled Allen Memorial, a rural hospital in Moab, Utah, that is using telepharmacy to cut costs and deliver better care to its rural patients. Because of new rules adopted in the late 1990s, all health facilities are required to have "daily control" of their pharmacy reports. To comply, Allen Memorial hired an on-site pharmacist but could not afford to have on-site pharmacists for its two smaller, satellite clinics. Allen Memorial used $400,000 in grants to start the telepharmacy program in 1998 and a "few years later" used a $250,000 grant from the state to keep the program running. The telepharmacy program works by linking the satellite clinics to the main hospital through an interactive video link run by the telemedicine office at the University of Utah. Allen Memorial's pharmacist receives and processes prescriptions from all three hospitals, refills nurse-operated drug-dispensing systems and "closely monitors" the assistant pharmacists working at the two satellite clinics. "The large hospitals and drugstore chains are offering very high salaries with signing bonuses and other perks we can't compete with. So we chose to spread the market cost of a pharmacist over three facilities in an affordable way," Allen Memorial CEO Chuck Davis said. Critics of telepharmacy contend that the computerized systems are "one more rejection of the hands-on interaction necessary for good, safe medical care," the Tribune reports. Kasey Thompson, director of patient safety at the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, agreed with the critics, but said, "When you're talking about remote hospital sites that are distant from a major population center, then it comes down to no pharmacy services versus some telepharmacy. Something is better than nothing" (Goodman, Salt Lake Tribune, 11/14).