Covenant Medical Center opened its retail pharmacy, which allows patients to get their medication before being discharged from the hospital.
“It ensures us that the patient, before they leave the facility, they have what they need, a 30, 60, 90 day supply, whatever their insurance plan might allow, before they walk out this door,” Allen Cunningham said. Cunningham is the Manager of the Clinical Pharmacy at Covenant.
President of Covenant Medical Center Walter Cathey said they were looking for ways to better serve their community.
“With a large, regional geo-graphical operation that we have, we kept seeing more and more patients coming back simply because they weren’t able to get the medications they needed to stay in the healthcare they got discharged with,” Cathey said.
The location serves both patients as well as employees and the public, as well.
“We are like your traditional retail pharmacy, in that we can bill your insurance and we are open to the general public, we do offer so much more,” pharmacist in charge Elise Johnson said. “We are patient oriented, as many of us have already said, and basically our idea is we want to make sure all our patients needs are met.”
Rebecca Guitierrez is a discharge nurse with Covenant. She said she follows up with patients after they leave the hospital and asks about the new pharmacy.
“We frequently call patients to ask them how they’re doing two or three days after they’ve gone home, and we ask them, how did you enjoy the pharmacy service?” she said. “They can’t tell us in words how much this benefits them, that they didn’t, that their family didn’t have to drive them somewhere, that they were able to leave with the medicine, so it’s a win-win.”
