Ensure Best-in-Class Patient Safety
With 100% Dispensing Accuracy
Do You Care About Reducing Dispensing Errors?
InstyMeds was founded in pursuit of a singular mission: leveraging technology to dispense prescription medications to patients at the point of care. We wanted to make picking up prescriptions 24/7 so easy that patients would want to choose InstyMeds. Yet we also knew that our technology would not make a difference unless patients and providers were confident that it was safe to use.
But what exactly did “safe dispensing” mean? For answers we turned to safety performance of pharmacies.
A national study of dispensing accuracy, published in 2003, found that 50 community pharmacies in six states had an overall accuracy rate of 98.3% on a sample of 4,481 filled prescriptions.1
Other studies performed over the past 35 years uncovered dispensing error rates in prescription filling operations ranging from 2% to 10%.1 The seemingly low 1.7% error rate would have resulted in about 1,028 prescriptions filled with errors a year at a typical community pharmacy based on the average annual dispensing volume of 60,493 prescriptions in 2015.2
We challenged ourselves to do better than that and came up with a simple definition for safety: dispensing the right drug to the right patient every time!
InstyMeds brings the best pharmacy safety practices to point-of-care dispensing by designing safety features into everything we do, from dispenser design to the Patient Service Center operations.
- All medication containers are barcoded and packaged by a VAWD-certified distributor.
- Medications supplied in unit-of-use packaging, in serialized containers with childproof caps and desiccants.
- There are no loose tablets.
- Packaging meets and exceeds industry standards for child safety.
- InstyMeds customers never have to reorder medications: we manage their inventories for them!
- Robust safety checks built into the InstyMeds drug packaging process.
- Error-proof and simple steps for restocking dispensers.
- Patients receive the exact medications prescribed by providers.
- Only authorized prescribers are allowed to issue InstyMeds prescription orders.
- Handwriting errors eliminated.
- Call-backs from pharmacy eliminated.
Patients receive:
- Counseling by provider;
- Secret code;
- Detailed drug information forms.
Using an InstyMeds dispenser:
- Patient identity validated;
- Patented triple-barcode safety check of every container eliminates dispensing errors;
- Each container dispensed with a personalized patient label that includes requisite safety warnings and complies with the state’s Board of Pharmacy requirements;
- Recalled or expired products cannot be dispensed to patients.
- Friendly and professional staff available to answer any patient questions 24/7, 365 days a year.
To Assess Our Safety Practices We Hired an Industry Titan
We partnered with Elizabeth A. Flynn, PhD, RPh, a renowned expert in the field of dispensing accuracy, a published author of pharmacy systems research and a practicing licensed pharmacist. In 2014 Dr. Flynn performed a study of the accuracy of prescriptions dispensed by InstyMeds.
The study also compared the accuracy of InstyMeds prescriptions with that of prescriptions dispensed by outpatient and community pharmacies involving pharmacist inspections of filled prescriptions.
- One thousand and one prescriptions were created by prescribers and dispensed by InstyMeds dispensers located at 41 healthcare facilities across 12 states.
- The study included 99 different medication products in ten different forms.
After evaluating 1,001 prescriptions dispensed by 41 randomly-selected InstyMeds dispensers, Dr. Flynn concluded that 100% of prescriptions were dispensed correctly.3
Accurate Dispensing
Understanding that the InstyMeds system is 100% accurate gives providers the confidence to send patients to InstyMeds at any time of day or night.
Fast Dispensing
And patients have the peace of mind that InstyMeds will always dispense medications fast, securely and with 100% accuracy.
Having dispensed over 4 million prescriptions in the US, Europe and the Middle East, InstyMeds has never dispensed a wrong prescribed drug. We could say that we helped our customers prevent about 56,000 potential dispensing errors. But then we would just be stating the obvious that they have come to expect from us.
Learn More About Direct-to-Patient Dispensing
Interested in learning more?
1 Flynn, E. A., et al. (2003). “National observational study of prescription dispensing accuracy and safety in 50 pharmacies.”
2 National Community Pharmacists Association. (2016). “NCPA Digest.“
3 Flynn, E. A. (2013). “A Study of the Accuracy of the InstyMeds Automated Prescription Dispensing System.”
