What Participants and Families Want From a PACE Pharmacy

In recent years, the older population and their caregivers have increasingly turned to long term care programs that allow them to age within their own communities, such as PACE centers. When evaluating options, potential participants consider a number of categories, including pharmacy services.   So what are participants and their families seeking in a PACE pharmacy? Read on for a look at three criteria they’re evaluating:  

PACE Pharmacy Evaluation Criteria #1: Medication Safety

For PACE participants and their families, safety is of the utmost concern. And with good reason. A 2012 study found that each year in the United States, the inappropriate use of medication — such as misuse of antibiotics or mismanaged polypharmacy — leads to approximately 10 million avoidable hospital admissions and 4 million emergency room visits.   Participants and their families want a PACE pharmacy that prioritizes safety and helps ensure the appropriate use of medication. Grane Rx utilizes brightly colored boxes to enable a quick and easy distinction between everyday meds vs. meds that are taken on an as needed basis.   Grane Rx promotes medication safety in a number of ways, including:  

• packaging automation for higher levels of accuracy
• medication consultation
• review of possible drug-to-drug interactions
• literacy tools to improve medication compliance

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PACE Pharmacy Evaluation Criteria #2: Simplicity and Convenience

Participants in PACE programs typically have a large number of chronic or acute medical conditions. To care for those conditions, participants may have dozens of medications to take on a daily basis.   Keeping track of those medications and ensuring they’re taken correctly can be challenging. Participants and their families want ways to simplify medication therapy.   Grane Rx offers a unique solution set to meet that need. As part of the PACE Pharmacy Solution, Grane Rx dispenses medications in prepackaged SimplePacks. This packaging uses automation to prepackage medications together so that they can be taken at morning, noon, evening, at bedtime, and on an as needed basis, simplifying the process of taking medication and replacing outdated, less functional punch cards.   In addition, Grane Rx’s PACE Pharmacy program delivers medications directly to each participant’s home, alleviating the need for the PACE site to manage medications at the center or worry about medication deliveries.  

PACE Pharmacy Evaluation Criteria #3: Education

As important as clinical reviews and safety protocols are, participant education plays an equally important role in promoting the appropriate use of medications. To help ensure medication adherence, participants and their families need to have a thorough understanding of medications, including what purpose the medications are prescribed for and what the dosages are.   Education is a significant part of the Grane Rx dispensing process. SimplePacks are paired with EasyReadTM medication summaries that help participants have more informed about their medications. Providers can counsel participants and their family members about medications and any potential barriers to taking medications correctly.   The packaging itself helps reinforce participant education. SimplePacks are labeled with written information about medications paired with visual representations of what each medication looks like.   Grane Rx provides comprehensive PACE pharmacy solutions to help you meet participant needs. ]]>