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To: Jim Spitz who wrote (37182)	11/19/2001 10:06:21 AM
From: Jim Spitz	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 37746

Vending machine dispenses prescription drugs Associated Press Published Nov 19 2001 It looks like a giant ATM machine, but instead of cash, the contraption at a Minnetonka pediatricians' office spits out prescription drugs. No more treks to the drugstore for a 45-minute wait with a sick child: Just insert the bar-coded prescription and a credit card, and out pops the medicine. InstyMeds is the first automated prescription drug dispenser to hit a doctor's office, the latest in a trend toward computerizing prescriptions to cut not just drugstore lines but dangerous errors. So far, InstyMeds is a pilot project. But Minnesota's pharmacy regulators have approved its use anywhere in the state, and the inventor hopes eventually to place the dispensers in doctors' ffices and emergency rooms around the country. Dr. Ken Rosenblum, a former emergency room physician, had the idea while hunting in a late-night pharmacy for antibiotics for his 5-year-old's ear infection. "I thought, 'This is crazy. ... Why do we get our health care at two places?'" Rosenblum said. "If you went to a restaurant and the waitress gave you an order slip and said, 'Now drive 2 miles away and wait an hour for your food,' we wouldn't do it." Americans have doubled prescription drug use since 1989, yet the number of pharmacists remains about the same. Drugstores report about 12,000 unfilled pharmacist positions. That means fewer late-night, holiday or 24-hour pharmacies -- even some emergency rooms have closed outpatient pharmacies -- and longer lines. Worse, prescription errors are blamed for 7,000 deaths a year. Among the causes are illegible prescriptions and slip-ups by overworked pharmacists. To help, many hospitals now use bar-coded drug stocks for inpatients to ensure they get the right drug. About 4 percent of doctors use Palm Pilot-like electronic prescription pads, eliminating the handwriting problem and allowing a quick records check to ensure that a new prescription won't interact dangerously with a patient's current drugs. InstyMeds combines those computerized safety systems to let patients buy their prescriptions at the touch of a few buttons. First to use it: a South Lake Pediatrics branch in Minnetonka. Dr. Keenan Richardson and five colleagues write e-prescriptions. They type in the child's weight, and the pad automatically calculates the right dosage. Parents get a prescription printout with a security code to type into InstyMeds. The computer verifies the prescription and checks insurance records. A credit card is swiped for the copay. Inside the machine, a bar-code reader picks a bottle with the right dose and amount of medicine, slaps on the instruction label, and out it pops. Within 12 weeks, InstyMeds was dispensing half of all prescriptions at Richardson's clinic. "People who use it once ... consistently want to do it again," said Richardson, who had been skeptical that it would work. A few other companies, including e-prescribing pioneer AllScripts, are pursuing doctor-based drug dispensers, but none is as fully automated, said Bruce Scott, past president of the American Society of Health System Pharmacists. It's not perfect. Poor people and ER patients may not have credit cards. And although InstyMeds can store up to 80 different medications, it can't carry everything. Plus, pharmacists have special expertise in counseling patients on safe drug use -- and drugstores can track prescriptions from different doctors to block dangerous medical interactions, added Matthew Grissinger of the watchdog Institute for Safe Medication Practices. Minnesota's pharmacy board praised the bar-code system as a way to ensure that patients get the right drug. Armed with board approval, Rosenblum's Mendota Healthcare Inc. is negotiating to place InstyMeds in additional doctors' offices and emergency rooms. Some drugstores also are considering automating easy-to-fill prescriptions to free pharmacists for other work, such as counseling. Users would hire Mendota to provide and stock the machine, at a cost of a few dollars for each prescription filled. © Copyright 2001 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.