In addition, UTMB provides managed care for 4,400 patients in 24 Texas Youth Commission facilities, as well as 5,000 inmates in three federal prisons located within the state. The facility operates 12 hours a day, five days a week. By automating the process, UTMB was able to reduce by 50 percent errors related to drug type and strength and triple the rate of clinical interventions, whereby staff pharmacists evaluate drug therapies and consult with prescribers to optimize them. It also enables us to turn around prescriptions in 24 hours and some in as little as 12 hours. That's unheard of in mail order pharmacies.
Operators use automated equipment to fill and seal prepackaged medication cards.
Prescription prepacks are picked and labeled with bar codes containing inmate-specific data. MDs, physicians' assistants and other physician extenders submit patient prescriptions via PCs and terminals that are hard wired to an IBM 3090 host and two processing computers. Concerns over security preclude the use of modems. Prescriptions for the juvenile and federal facilities, which account for 10 percent of the total, are faxed. After picking the proper medication, operators affix bar code labels containing human-readable and bar coded data that include patient demographic information, such as type of medication, strength, dosage and cost, patient name and location by prison and region.