Helping Seniors Live Healthier Lives

What Additional Services Can Nursing Home Pharmacies Provide?

If you work in a local nursing home, you may only be a bit familiar with the pharmacy that services your facility. You might have called them to get a missing medication or to renew a certain medicine for patients, for instance. However, nursing home pharmacies can be much beneficial to your patients and facility if you have a deeper idea of the many services these pharmacies provide. What are some additional pharmacy services?

Monitoring Medications

In your facility, giving out medications to dozens of patients in a single shift doesn't give staffers much time to think. While patients' doctors are keeping track of what they're prescribing for each patient, senior citizens are typically receiving medications prescribed by multiple doctors. A nursing home pharmacy can fully see all of the medications patients receive. As a result, they can raise alarms if certain medications are being duplicated or whether there are drug interactions that need attention. It will help your nurses to know that the pharmacy is also being mindful of the medications your patients take.

Lowering Hospital Readmissions

You may know from your experience that nursing home patients are periodically sent out the hospital for different acute conditions. Nursing home pharmacies can help prevent them from being re-admitted to the hospital for reasons connected to their conditions or medications. Warnings from the pharmacies can put the nursing staff on guard so that the patient is cared for. For instance, a patient getting urinary tract infections can become dehydrated, which would mean that they could be sent out to the hospital for treatment. However, with a warning from the pharmacy when they deliver antibiotics can remind nursing home staff to give the patient more water throughout each shift.

Compounding Medication

There are times when special medications must be drawn up for one patient. The therapeutic dose for the patient might not be available commercially. They might need a specific concentration or combination of medications. Traditional pharmacies aren't usually equipped to create these special orders. However, compounding medication, as the practice is called, can be done by nursing home pharmacies. This is especially important for senior citizens who have to take multiple medications every day or need special care.

Nursing home pharmacies service a specific portion of the population for a reason; these pharmacies know what facilities need and can tailor their services to help. Contact the pharmacy your facility uses and talk about which services best suit your nursing home.


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