In general, long term care pharmacies provides pharmacy, education, consulting, and related services for long-term care patients. The long-term care population requires an understanding of their unique needs. Their primary focus is to ensure the patients have access to their medications in a timely manner.
Where are Long Term Care Pharmacies?
With the aging of the “baby boomers’, there is a growing need for long term care pharmacies. These pharmacies operate in skilled nursing facilities, long-term care units, nursing homes, hospice care facilities, and rehabilitation centers.
The pharmacies provide a variety of services such as order filling, medication reviews, reviewing drug interactions, maintenance of medical records, resident billing, and much more.
Although most long term care pharmacies work primarily with geriatrics patients, they can work with any long-term population group.
Services
Many long term care pharmacies offer different services than a conventional pharmacy such as medication delivery any day of the week, medication review, medication monitoring, and telephone consultations.
A major benefit of a long term care pharmacy is that they can establish a relationship with the patients. When this occurs, the pharmacy is better able to monitor their customers. This is especially important with the geriatric population with their treatments and medication. They can have consultations with their patients in order to provide individualized care. By focusing on the patients and their conditions, the patients receive a higher standard of care and provides the patients with peace of mind regarding their care and treatment.
Discharge Medication Program
One benefit of using a long term care pharmacy is that they can supply the medications to patients who are discharging to either their home or another facility. Patients who discharge to their home tend to have a better outcome when supplied with their medication than patients who do not have their medication.