"off site" hospital pharmacy jobs

[newslang]

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I work in a hospital as a tech and I know a significant portion of patient's medications are entered into the computer system by off site pharmacists who work from home. I'm curious about how common these jobs are and what they're like. What are the pros/cons vs. working in a single hospital on site? Do most jobs involve working for multiple hospitals? If so is it difficult to work with multiple formularies or does the computer system help with that? Are these positions relegated to overnight shifts?

Also what's the technical name for this kind of position so I can research it myself?

 

[kismet]

At my hospital our "night pharmacy" is handled by Cardinal Health. Maybe you can find job descriptions on their website or something. The job might be called "remote order entry" or something.

As for your questions, from what I've seen, remote entry is typically used for the times no one else wants to work (e.g. overnight). Our remote pharmacists are in the same time zone as us; I guess you could find jobs across time zones to help deal with the undesireable hours but then your pharmacists are going to need to be licensed in several states. I think the big challenge isn't so much multiple formularies but multiple order-entry systems. Every system has its own quirks.

 

[Hpower12]

nice, I am at work now and someone was talking about this at lunch. they basically said you can make a ton of money and work from home, or well work anywhere I guess that you have internet access to. I tried finding more info online but I didn't come up with much.

 

[nafcillin]

very, very interested! Could anyone send me a PM or more information about this?

 

[njac]

as much as I like this in theory I don't think I would be comfortable with it in practice.

I think a lot of people don't realize how much you, as a staff pharmacist "order entry monkey", can influence patient care. If you're just a voice from a call center who can't come up to the floor and hand a rude nurse her medication (or thank a sweet one for a great catch) it just detaches everyone from the process too much. Even doing order entry I like to go look at the patient, temps, urine output, etc, stuff the nurse doesn't always have the time or inclination to get for you.

 

[kismet]

as much as I like this in theory I don't think I would be comfortable with it in practice.

I think a lot of people don't realize how much you, as a staff pharmacist "order entry monkey", can influence patient care. If you're just a voice from a call center who can't come up to the floor and hand a rude nurse her medication (or thank a sweet one for a great catch) it just detaches everyone from the process too much. Even doing order entry I like to go look at the patient, temps, urine output, etc, stuff the nurse doesn't always have the time or inclination to get for you.

I think it depends on the hospital. It's not ideal, but in smaller hospitals where it's not cost-effective to be open for 24 hours, it covers things overnight. The off-site pharmacists have access to all our computer systems; they get orders scanned to them, they can see the patient's profile and all older orders, and they can access laboratory values. We have Pyxis distribution units so once the pharmacist enters the order the nurses can get the dose out (and only the dose, which is safer than overriding for a med that hasn't been approved by pharmacy yet). If the nurses have questions about an order or medication, they can call the pharmacist on the phone and maybe get a better answer from someone who is entering the patient's meds instead of a groggy on-call pharmacist who just woke up and has no idea what meds the patient is currently on. If the pharmacist has a question or needs a clarification they can call the nurse or scan back the order with comments.

In a large hospital, it would definitely be less advantageous to use an off-site pharmacy. For one thing, they are expensive (I think Cardinal gets $5/order from us) so if you have a high volume of orders it makes more sense to have someone on-site. But we've got less than 60 beds, and while the off-site pharmacists aren't perfect, it's better for us than letting all the orders pile up until the morning and gives the physicians and nurses someone awake to call when they have questions. I think each hospital will have different solutions for staffing.

 

[njac]

I definitely agree - I admit to being short sighted as I don't really see myself in a super small hospital.

But for smaller, rural hospitals, many are owned by corporations that own 10+ similar venues - for those companies it totally makes sense to outsource graveyard order entry. Also, the hospitals are small enough that hopefully patients won't fall through the cracks like they could if there were 10x more beds.

 

[SpirivaSunrise]

And keep in mind JC's requirement for pharmacist approval prior to admin of first dose...

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