Saving Time, Improving Care: The Impact of MEG's Clinical Pharmacy App at St. John's Hospital
Summary
St.John's is an acute General Public Voluntary Hospital located in Limerick, Ireland. The hospital has 99 beds and various out-patient and in-patient specialties. The Clinical Pharmacy team at St. John's Hospital was previously using Excel spreadsheets to screen patients at admission, assign them a risk score, and perform Medicines Reconciliation and Clinical Pharmacist review. This system was inefficient and time-consuming, and they were on the lookout for a digital system to help them with day-to-day operations. This article is a case study on how MEG's Clinical Pharmacy module was implemented at St. John's Hospital and how it helped the pharmacy team. MEG is a Quality Management System designed to replace inefficient and time-consuming quality software solutions, assisting hospitals in improving patient safety, providing better care, and boosting positive patient outcomes.- Author Company: Medical EGuides (MEG)
- Author Name: Pavithra Dennis
- Author Email: pavithra@megit.com
- Author Telephone: +919620191711
- Author Website: https://megit.com/
Founded in 1780, St. John's is an acute General Public Voluntary Hospital with a total of 99 beds and several in-patient specialties like General Medicine, Clinical Recovery and Support Unit (CRSU), General Surgery, Gynaecology, a dietician service, diagnostics, and more. Pharmacy services include Clinical Pharmacy, a Medication Safety Programme, Antimicrobial Stewardship, and a Pharmacist-led Anticoagulation Clinic.
For this project, MEG worked with the Pharmacy department to build a Clinical Pharmacy Application that they could use on a day-to-day basis.
THE BACKGROUND
Pharmacists at St. John's Hospital work to ensure safe, optimal, and cost-effective use of medicines at admission, during the stay, and onwards after their discharge. They screen all patients at admission and assign them a risk score to be prioritised for Medicines Reconciliation and Clinical Pharmacist Review. And to help them do this efficiently, they needed a system.
THE CHALLENGE
Previously, the pharmacy team at St. John's Hospital relied on a paper spreadsheet generated weekly from iPMS (the hospital's patient administration system) to manage patient lists, assign risk scores, track Medicines Reconciliation, and record Clinical Pharmacist reviews.
However, this manual process led to cluttered and difficult-to-read sheets, confusion in workload management and patient handover, and a lack of historical data for evaluation and improvement. Senior Pharmacist Carol Johansson reached out to us to address these inefficiencies and build a better system.
THE SOLUTION
MEG implemented the Clinical Pharmacy Application for St. John's Hospital, enabling digital input of patient data, efficient task management, and seamless communication with the medical team through the Clinical Pharmacist Review PDF. Over three months, the system was tailored to their workflow, allowing hospital pharmacists to triage patients, assign risk scores, and track Medicines Reconciliation.
The application also includes extensive reporting dashboards with valuable insights and historical data so the Chief Pharmacist can access them whenever needed. St. John's Hospital became an official customer after a successful pilot period in April 2022.
THE RESULT
MEG's Clinical Pharmacy Application has saved the St. John's Hospital pharmacy team hours by eliminating the need for manual data transcription. The central database for risk scoring, Medicines Reconciliation, and Clinical Pharmacist reviews has improved efficiency, workload distribution, handover, and overall pharmaceutical care quality and patient safety.
The system's task management data helps identify areas for improvement and supports collaboration with the multidisciplinary team, while reporting dashboards provide valuable statistics for monitoring service efficacy and regulatory compliance, even impressing HIQA during an inspection.
