State-of-the-Art Robotics Technology Helps Pharmacy of Grace Meet Increasing Demand
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday February 19th, 2024
Kansas City, KS – As the need for affordable medication continues to increase at Kansas City’s only charitable pharmacy, Pharmacy of Grace is turning to technology to meet demand. The CRS 225 (Compact Robotic System) is a robot that can fill 150 vials an hour. The improved efficiency also frees up the pharmacists’ time to provide in-depth healthcare and medication guidance.
Why A Robot?
Prescription volume at Pharmacy of Grace has increased 160% in the last year. Our staff also has the added challenge of managing inventory from five different sources, including donated medications that can only be used for patients at certain income levels. This takes a lot of our staff’s time maintaining the inventory, so we turned to donors to ask for their support in order to purchase this state-of-the-art technology to improve efficiency.
The CRS 225 is a reliable and accurate prescription dispensing system that automates repetitive tasks and reduces the risk of human error or cross-contamination. It also sorts the medication inventory to accurately track when donated medications were used and makes sure the pharmacy is a good steward of our donations.
Pharmacy staff use barcodes throughout the process to ensure quality control and will oversee the dispensing process from prescription entry to verification of the finished product. CRS 225 prints all the labels but delivers the uncapped medications for the pharmacy staff’s final inspection and verification.
About the Donors
Pharmacy of Grace purchased the robot from Kansas City-based ScriptPro. The purchase was made possible thanks to funding from The H & R Block Foundation, The Sunderland Foundation, Dunn Family Foundation, Vivian and Hymie J. Sosland Charitable Trust, the Breidenthal-Snyder Community Fund, and other anonymous donors.
Healthcare Counseling
One of the founding principles at Pharmacy of Grace is the pharmacists’ role in addressing patients’ healthcare needs. Pharmacists see patients 12 times more often than their primary care provider (on average), and this is why Pharmacy of Grace offers one-on-one counseling to ensure patients understand what medications they are taking, why they need the medication, and how to take it correctly.
In addition to Spanish-speaking staff, Pharmacy of Grace has a translation service available to help overcome language barriers to ensure patients understand their medications regardless of their primary language.
The CRS 225 robot frees up more of our pharmacists’ time to have these one-on-one counseling sessions to improve patients’ understanding of their medications, which improves adherence and ultimately leads to improved health outcomes for patients.
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More About Pharmacy of Grace
Pharmacy of Grace is a 501c(3) nonprofit in Wyandotte County, Kansas, which opened in July 2022. The pharmacy’s location near I-635 and Minnesota is an area of tremendous social and healthcare need, with 30-40% of residents uninsured and the highest number of people living in poverty in the Kansas City Metro.
The Purpose of Pharmacy of Grace, Inc. is to break the cycle of homelessness, poverty, school absentee days, and unemployment caused by unmanaged medical conditions. Many chronic medical conditions (such as hypertension, diabetes, congestive heart failure, asthma, COPD, bipolar, and migraines) often go unmanaged, which eventually can cause people to seek costly medical care and possible emergency hospitalization.
The Mission of Pharmacy of Grace is to improve access to prescription medication for uninsured and underinsured individuals and to increase the number of prescription medications available to vulnerable populations in Kansas.
Watch our video about the robot here: https://youtu.be/9XtWzSbvttI