CASE STUDY
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A BUSY NEIGHBORHOOD PHARMACY
Couch Pharmacy is a local, independently owned retail pharmacy serving a diverse
community in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Located in one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods, their
team of pharmacists and pharmacy techs moves fast — filling between 450 and 600
prescriptions a day. This includes a combination of automated and manual hand filling,
says Cody Abbott, operations manager for the pharmacy.
No stranger to automation, Couch Pharmacy has relied on a vial-fill robot for nearly two
decades. Unlike some pharmacies using this type of automation, Abbott says his team
follows a scan-to-fill workflow. They have staff dedicated to inputting and adjudicating
prescriptions. Once adjudicated, pharmacists and techs then print out batches of labels,
scan the items that can be automated, and hand count the rest. “I know many pharmacies
will have their software communicate directly with the robot,” Abbott explains, “but that
process just doesn’t fit our multi-user environment.”
THE CHALLENGE: AGING TECHNOLOGY AND
INCREASING DOWNTIME
As Couch Pharmacy’s original robot began to sunset, keeping the system running became
a challenge. Replacement parts were getting increasingly harder to source and could take
weeks to procure. At the same time, the quality of customer service was becoming an
issue. “The technicians sent to diagnose an issue weren’t always knowledgeable in the
legacy system,” explains Abbott. “It could take several calls to their in-house experts and
all day to get to the root of the problem.” As a result, parts of the robot could be down for a
month or more — which meant more manual counting and filling by pharmacy staff.
Over time, the process for swapping out canisters also changed. “Canisters needed to
be recalibrated all the time for whatever reason,” Abbott says. It could be due to minor
changes in the dimension of a pill, onboarding a new manufacturer for an NDC, or simple
wear and tear. Early on, Couch Pharmacy just had to request a new canister — but by
Couch Pharmacy Finds
a Better Way to Fill
Prescriptions With Flexible,
Reliable Automation
Cody Abbott
Operations Manager
~ Couch Pharmacy
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