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Pueblo Community Health Center Thriving with PharmASSIST Technology
Colorado-based Health Center Cites PharmASSIST’s Workflow Management, Quality Control, and Rx Tracking for Success

JOHNSON CITY, NY - May 14, 2004 - Continuing its strong focus on the hospital/health clinic market, Innovation Associates announces that Pueblo Community Health Center of Pueblo, Colorado has become the latest community health center to purchase and successfully implement a PharmASSIST Symphony+ System. The health center selected Innovation’s PharmASSIST technology to help achieve their primary business goals of increasing capacity to address rising Rx volumes, enhancing workflow efficiency and patient safety initiatives, and improving customer service.

Our actual Rx volumes are more than double what we originally forecasted when we opened our doors in 2001,” says Terry Kurtz, director of pharmacy at Pueblo Community Health Center. “Prior to automating with PharmASSIST, we were struggling to keep up with our workload and we had no way of tracking prescriptions during the filling process. Finding misplaced prescriptions was extremely labor intensive and often caused disruptions among our staff.” Adds Kurtz, “Today we’re filling around 65% of our total volume with the automated counting, and the system’s Rx tracking capability has been huge for us. Within seconds we know exactly where to find and know the specific status of any prescription in our pharmacy.”

Pueblo Community Health Center fills on average 420 prescriptions per day and has peak periods that reach over 700 prescriptions daily. The health center employs a PharmASSIST Symphony+ System comprised of 2 PharmASSIST cabinets, 100 dispensers, and 7 workstations for Order Entry/Rx Imaging, Auto-Fill, Manual-Fill, Rx Verification, Will Call Bin Management, and Electronic Signature Capture. The PharmASSIST system is integrated with the health center’s Renlar pharmacy management system, ensuring real-time prescription order flow for all filling tasks.

According to Kurtz, the health center is well on their way to achieving their initial goals, and is also realizing various other benefits. “In just a few months, our workload is much more manageable, our quality control is better than ever, and our patient wait times are down significantly,” says Kurtz. “PharmASSIST’s reporting capabilities have also been a great help. We generate the operator barcode mis-scan report constantly and present that to our quality improvement committee. And we run the Return-to-Stock report daily to identify prescriptions in our will call bins that have not been picked up by patients. This helps keep our patient pickup area well organized and helps to generate revenue because we can resell the drugs that aren’t picked up,” he adds.

Founded in 1983, Pueblo Community Health Center is a full-service family practice medical and dental provider serving 16,000 people each year. A member of the Colorado Community Health Network, PCHC’s mission “to provide primary care to those in need” is manifested through a focus on serving uninsured residents, migrant and seasonal farm workers, and the homeless. Special programs including immunizations, prenatal, mental health and health education help PCHC get close to providing 100% access and zero disparities. For more information about the Colorado Community Health Network, visit www.cchn.org.

Innovation Associates, Inc., a leader in the world of automated prescription dispensing, offers the PharmASSIST family of products to address the prescription growth, quality assurance, pharmacy workflow, and cost control challenges of all size pharmacies. With over three decades of broad-based, business experience, Innovation Associates is dedicated to delivering the highest-quality pharmacy automation products to the pharmacy industry. For more information on Innovation Associates, Inc., visit www.innovat.com.

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