Originally Published PMPN March 2005
NEWS
NuCare Rolls Out Prefilled Bottles |
| The ER Pack prefilled bottle line from NuCare is designed to save hospital ER departments money and dispensing time. |
A southern California repackaging company has launched a new line of prefilled pharmaceutical bottles that it says will save hospitals money and dispensing time.
The ER Pack, which is available for Schedule II drugs only, has been designed specifically for hospital emergency rooms, according to Douglas Ginter, president of NuCare Pharmaceuticals (Orange, CA), the creator of the bottle line. “These are ideal for ER departments that dispense medication,” he says. “It makes that whole process very fast and simple, and it’s much more cost-effective for them than doing the repackaging themselves.”
The ER Pack is designed to be a much smaller size than traditional pharmaceutical bottles. “That’s so pharmacists can fit more of them in dispensing cabinets or robotic dispensing machines,” suggests Ginter. “The ER Pack allows them to order their most common prescription refills in convenient prepacks.
The bottles feature NuCare’s EZ-Peel labels for charting and dispensing logs. The bottles are also child-resistant and bar-coded to meet federal requirements, says Ginter. They are assembled in NuCare’s own pharmaceutical repackaging facility in Orange. Each bottle is also color-coded by drug class.
“Hospitals have rules about 72-hour dispensing, and dispensing pharmaceuticals can be very labor-intensive,” says Ginter. “This product is really designed to help ease those duties. These days, staffing shortages and heavy workloads have just made everything harder.” Ginter says that by purchasing controlled medication for immediate dispensing, pharmacists can reduce loss and have more control over the process. “Instead of having to prefill and label hundreds of Vicodin pills, for example, with six pills in each bottle, pharmacists can purchase directly from us, which frees up their time for better patient care,” he says. “With the bottle’s EZ-Peel label, a doctor can realistically dispense and record the information in less than 15 seconds.”
NuCare provides thousands of custom formularies to VA Centers, the military, and hospitals and clinics across the country, according to Ginter. In addition, the company has the ability to safely handle the packaging of antibiotic products.
Copyright ©2005 Pharmaceutical & Medical Packaging News
