RFID Brings Further Automation to Mail-Order Pharmacy

In addition to dispensing bulk medications, the system tracks medications prepackaged in boxes, tubes, blister packs and form factors when manufactured, as they are removed from a storage area and automatically put into RFID-tagged totes, which also bear RFID tags associated with a patient's order. As the system places the medicine in the tote, the interrogator reads the tote's tag, updating the associated order to indicate the medicine has been removed from the storage area.

Medications from the pick-to-light area—which holds low-volume products manually pulled and placed in RFID-tagged totes—are also tracked. Again, the reader scans each tote tag and updates the database accordingly. The conveyer moves all the filled totes to another part of the distribution center to be checked against each order manually. Once that is done, the orders are then released for packing and shipping.

The RFID-enabled system is designed to augment the heavily automated processes currently in place at mail-order pharmacies. In general, pharmacies are capable of filling between 20,000 and 80,000 prescriptions per day, according to Escort Memory Systems. There are several types of automated pharmacies, including those owned by the Veterans' Administration, nonprofit organizations such as Sutter Health and for-profit insurers including UnitedHealth Group and Humana.

The addition of RFID is intended to help mail-order pharmacies improve efficiencies and reduce errors. For several years, the pharmacies have used bar codes to track the medicines and totes, but Todd says there are generally more errors with bar-code readings than with RFID readings. Whenever a faulty read or error arises, a person must resolve the issue.

On average, one error occurs per 100 bar-code reads, and each prescription is scanned about 100 times during the picking and packing process. For a pharmacy that fills 80,000 prescriptions per day, that translates to 80,000 errors. By replacing bar-code labels with RFID tags, Todd says, a pharmacy could cut the error rate by 99 percent, leaving only about 800 errors per day. "Each error costs the mail-order pharmacy time and money, so there is a huge economic benefit to reducing the number of errors," he says.