The Benefits of In-Home Pharmacy Services for Assisted Living Residents

For every assisted living community, family and resident satisfaction is of utmost importance. These two factors have the largest say in influencing your facility’s reputation. That in turn also affects your occupancy and retention rates, which also shape the trajectory of your bottom line. In-home pharmacy services can work to ensure your residents lack for nothing, assuring peace of mind, convenience, and comfort for those under your care. For your staff and facility, it can mean a lesser burden in terms of catering to your seniors’ medication needs and reducing administrative tasks as well. So how exactly do in-home pharmacy services help seniors in assisted living? Here are a few important benefits that paint the picture. 

Residents enjoy round-the-clock accessibility 

Residents can forget to have their prescriptions filled. While it is the case that most facilities have staff who take care of ensuring that doesn’t happen, emergencies still come to pass nonetheless.  

The great thing about in-home pharmacy services is that your residents enjoy 24/7 accessibility. That helps to cater to after-hours needs as well as provide prompt assistance in the face of an emergency. Additionally, this also means faster access to prescriptions for seniors. With faster turnaround in the time of need, these services ensure: 

• Excellent reliability 
• Fewer lapses in care
• Minimal delays in the treatment plan
• Aversion of adverse events

Overall, this means more positive health outcomes for seniors as well as greater satisfaction and confidence in your community. 

They can get on-site vaccinations and shots

By the time a senior citizen moves into a care community, they likely need help with their daily activities of living. Mobility is typically a challenge for many assisted living residents, with studies by the National Institutes of Health indicating that limited mobility is a problem for 9 out of 10 long-term care residents. 

Instead of residents having to make lengthy or cumbersome trips to a pharmacy for vaccines, an in-home solution ensures minimal travel distance and discomfort. Even bedridden patients in need of shots can be served easily at their bedside. 

In-home pharmacy services ensure readily available solutions for a number of vaccines that older adults need. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, some of these shots include:  

• Shingles vaccines
• Flu vaccines
• Pneumococcal vaccines
• COVID-19 vaccines and much more

In cases of periodic shots such as the Coronavirus vaccines, these services can save your residents a whole lot of time and trouble. In the same breath, these pharmacies may also ensure quick access to COVID and other illness tests. 

Residents are not exposed to HAI risks

The elderly are particularly at great risk of healthcare-acquired infections, better known as HAIs. As we age, the capability of our bodies to hold up to infection deteriorates as a consequence of diminishing lymphocytes. When that happens, our immune system isn’t as effective at fighting off pathogens.

Conventional healthcare settings, including hospitals and pharmacies, experience high patient throughput which increases the risk of these infections. Annually, more than 630,000 patients contract HAIs, leading to even more severe complications and symptoms.

In-home pharmacy services offer a much safer alternative for residents and care staff. Both don’t get to handle prescriptions via walk-ins, but can instead rely on the pharmacy to deliver prescriptions right to their doorsteps. 

The result is fewer opportunities for the transmission of HAIs, which are primarily dispersed through contact. Your residents can keep safe and minimize travel, all without jeopardizing the quality or continuity of their care. 

There’s better medication adherence 

The leading cause of treatment failures today is medication non-adherence. According to the US Pharmacist, it contributes to: 

• 1 in 4 admissions annually across America
• Approximately 125,000 fatalities 
• 5 in 10 treatment failures 

Medication non-adherence is even more rampant for assisted living residents due to mental and physical challenges. For example, seniors with vision and memory problems may find it hard to keep up with medication. And with assisted living staff typically providing medication assistance for several patients at a time, it all gets really overwhelming and confusing, opening the door to medication errors.

Bay Life provides unique in-home pharmacy services that address the elephant in the room with special custom packaging. We cater to unique healthcare needs through strategic dose packaging, which maps out medications by day and time to be taken.

No more hassle for both staff and residents. Instead, a neater, simpler, and much safer way to track prescriptions and enforce adherence. 

Residents enjoy prompt medication correction 

Research by Harvard University links over 200,000 annual deaths to adverse reactions resulting from prescription meds. In-home pharmacy services enable the close monitoring of residents, allowing for the timely identification of these side effects that could be warning signs for a looming disaster. 

Via tele pharmacy, in-home pharmacy services can keep tabs on how patients are fairing with their medications to avoid untenable side effects. Additionally, we may monitor supply to better put our finger on refill dates and gauge compliance as well. 

At Bay Life Compounding Pharmacy, we don’t just take the reactive approach. Our care process is very proactive. We take into account the residents’ current medication, their history, and their hospital’s instructions to also mitigate mistakes. In case we find discrepancies, we liaise with the prescribing physician’s office to clear up the matter. 

Moreover, our pharmacy works to alleviate medication areas by leveraging electronic medication administration record software or eMAR. This enables us to reduce the amount of paperwork, bolster oversight across the care team, improve efficiency, and perhaps, most significantly, lower medication mistakes even further. 

Turn to Bay Life for your community’s pharmacy needs

In-home pharmacy services are a life-saver for assisted living residents. They enable faster access to prescriptions and vacations as well as round-the-clock availability of support and medical advice. Moreover, residents enjoy greater convenience, more so individuals suffering from mobility challenges. Bay Life Compounding Pharmacy serves many communities in the Tampa Bay area, including auxiliary Florida counties.  We tend to last-minute patient needs and work to ensure peace of mind and better health for your residents, their families, and your staff. Give Bay Life Pharmacy a call today to learn how we can be of service to your community.