Illinois hospital automates medication process with McKesson IT solution

Rush-Copley Medical Center in Aurora, Ill., has installed a barcode-based, closed-loop system from McKesson to automate the 183-bed hospital’s medication-use process.   

The company said that the hospital will transform from a manual to an automated environment. Pharmacists will use the Horizon Meds Manager pharmacy information system to electronically receive, verify and process a doctor’s order for patient medications. The medications will then be packaged in individual doses imprinted with bar codes using the Pacmed packager. The prescribed medication will be selected by McKesson’s automated Robot-Rx system.

The company said its MedCarousel storage and retrieval system manages drug inventory and streamlines refill of nursing’s medication cabinets. And nurses will use its Horizon Admin-Rx handheld bar-code scanning system to electronically verify and document the medication administration. An alert will trigger if the medication, dosage, or administration is incorrect, prompting the nurse to check the patient’s chart and the doctor’s order.

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