Ross Rortvedt, PharmD, is a Senior Director of Pharmacy Solutions at Genoa. Here he shares some thoughts on Genoa’s high-touch, customizable pharmacy solutions designed for assisted living facilities.
For assisted living communities, the right long-term care pharmacy partner can help reduce residents’ costs, minimize billing complaints, help limit medication errors and provide greater resident and staff happiness. But it’s not just the pharmacy services that help – more importantly, it’s the pharmacy partner’s ability and dedication to getting to know each community and resident they serve.
Genoa Healthcare assisted living pharmacy services are rooted in relationships. By knowing each community’s unique residents, needs and challenges, Genoa can deliver customized pharmacy services that ease the burden of medication-related issues for staff, residents and their families.
So how exactly does a Genoa pharmacist help?
Here’s a brief summary of what Genoa pharmacists are focused on when working with assisted living communities and how they can be one of your best resources:
- Support and customer service from a local pharmacist: Your Genoa Healthcare pharmacist and account manager are local to your region. They spend time at your community getting to know you and your residents. When you call Genoa with a question or issue, you talk to your dedicated pharmacist, not a call center. When you need emergency medications outside of pharmacy hours, Genoa delivers at no cost to you or your residents. You have a personal connection to a pharmacy partner your staff and residents trust.
- Peace of mind through medication regimen reviews: Any time a resident moves into a partner community Genoa takes it as an opportunity to do a full medication review. A transition in care is a key opportunity to reduce medication errors. The medication review allows the Genoa pharmacist to collect the information needed to make drug recommendations and coordinate therapy with all of the physicians involved in an individual’s care. This results in a better quality of life for residents, and peace of mind for the care team.
- Fewer questions and reduced errors: The technology and automation Genoa uses reduce errors both before and after we dispense medication. Our prescription labels include an image of the resident and the medication to help with checking in and administering medications.
- Enhanced care through education: Education is a critical component for every assisted living community. Genoa pharmacists and account managers can provide yearly medication competency assessments, ongoing medication administration observations, and training on compliance, medication safety, or any other topic requested by the care team.
- Less worry with fewer medications and lower costs: Two of the most common complaints we hear when it comes to medication in assisted living facilities are:
- Patients are on too many medications
- Medications cost too much
Genoa pharmacists are eager to work collaboratively with nurses and prescribers to minimize the number of medications being used, and we also offer suggestions and generic options to achieve the same goal. In the end, residents benefit from the convenience of and better outcomes from fewer medications, nurse teams benefit from a streamlined medication pass, and facilities benefit from saving money on both the cost of medications and nursing time.
About the Onboarding Process
Time is valuable. The transition to a Genoa pharmacy is easy and stress-free. Once a commitment between a community and Genoa is made, we ask for three things: face sheets, each resident’s medication list, and the name of their physicians. We will even travel to your community to help collect this information.
Crunching the Numbers
To help decrease medication costs for assisted living residents, we dispense generic medication whenever possible. There is also no cost for assisted living communities to partner with Genoa. Medication delivery, access to emergency on-call support, customized medication packaging, education services, benefit of an on-call pharmacist, and fantastic customer service all come at no charge.
Genoa Healthcare provides high-touch, customizable pharmacy solutions and can collaborate with assisted living communities in many ways. If you have questions or would like to discuss ways to enhance the care at your community, contact us to learn more.
