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News Release
For Immediate Release (10/08/09)
Forward Thinking Pharmacy Design Boosts Patient
Safety, Efficiency and Aesthetics
A new hospital pharmacy design, for
the Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital, has many goals, but the
number one goal, from the beginning, was always clear: patient
safety. The director of the pharmacy, Allan Cohen, PhD --- who
signs all of his emails with the phrase Patient Safety is
Contagious Pass It On! --- and the Assistant Director, Sergio
Castro, made sure that patient safety played a central role in
the myriad decisions made in the planning and design process for
the new pharmacy.
Also playing an
important role in the process was a forward-looking hospital
facilities planning department --- headed by Ronald Biscaro,
with Scott Allen as Project Manager --- that wanted the best and
latest thinking in pharmacy planning.
So it was that the
pharmacy design firm of Bernstein & Associates, Architects,
based in New York, was hired to work with the pharmacy and
facilities planning departments, to create the best and most
forward-thinking pharmacy design possible.
Patient safety
considerations, as mentioned, played a central role in the
planning of the pharmacy. One way that patient safety was
addressed was through the extensive use of pharmacy automation
equipment. Put simply, pharmacy automation dramatically
decreases the potential for human error in the selection and
delivery of medication. Pharmacy automation equipment utilized
in the design included: MedCarousel by Mckesson in the central
work area; pneumatic tube stations by Swisslog; IV Stations by
Devon Robotics in the central work area; PillPick System by
Swisslog in robot area; NarcStation units in the Narcotics Area
by McKesson; BoxPicker by Swisslog in the central work area;
CytoCare Robot by Devon Robotics in the hazardous compounding
room, and a RxMedic Robot by RxMedic Systems in the employee
pharmacy.
Another way that patient
safety was addressed was through a logical arrangement of
pharmacy areas and zones. This was accomplished through a
methodical and comprehensive planning process for the pharmacy.
The process started with adjacency diagrams, flow diagrams, room
lists, equipment lists, and overall goals. These initial
pharmacy planning diagrams and lists, were then converted by the
architect into a space program and initial design concepts for
client review. As schemes were produced, they were refined
incorporating input from facilities, the pharmacy department,
equipment manufacturers, and engineers. Underlying this process
was the goal of making a clear and logical pharmacy plan to
facilitate logical flow of materials and staff, to again
minimize the potential for errors in order entry, flow and
delivery.
Perhaps most important
in addressing both patient safety as well as staff safety, was
the creation of separate rooms for compounding sterile products:
one room for non-hazardous compounding, and one room for
hazardous compounding. Access to these rooms is strictly
controlled through an anteroom. All three of these rooms are
designed to meet cleanroom standards, including high levels of
air purity, directional air flow, and 100% heap filtered exhaust
of the hazardous compounding room. In this way, the risk of
transmission of infection through pharmaceutical products is
greatly reduced. Additionally, by segregating the hazardous
compounding room, and designing it with negative airflow into
the room and 100% heap-filtered exhaust, a safer environment is
also created for the staff working in this space.
In some ways a
by-product of the focus on safety, is the resulting design which
maximizes the efficiency of the flow of materials as well as
staff. Flow of materials, as well as flow of personnel, were
taken into account, to produce the most logical and efficient
pharmacy plan, in order to take advantage of every square foot
of space made available for the project, as well as to maximize
the efficiency of the plan to save as much staff time and travel
as possible. The extensive use of pharmacy automation equipment
also creates a logical and time-efficient environment for
producing and delivering pharmaceuticals throughout the
hospital.
An important
consideration in the project was the aesthetics of the pharmacy
environment. The facility design started with a concept of
transparency --- the opportunity for staff to see through one
room to another (and often another after that) to increase
communication, the sense of a team environment, and in general
an open, modern environment. The main passages through the
pharmacy are only partly by walls, but also distinguished
through changes in lighting, finish and color to distinguish
passage from functional space. On the subject of lighting,
various types of energy efficient lighting are used throughout,
with different types appropriate to function used in work areas
vs. offices vs. conference and lounge spaces. Finally, bringing
the concepts of safety, efficiency and aesthetics together, the
central cleanroom spaces for sterile compounding --- anteroom,
non-hazardous compounding and hazardous compounding --- are
distinguished from the rest of the pharmacy through the use of
color and a distinctive but relevant shape for the windows into
these rooms, anchoring the notion of a carefully thought-out,
forward-looking pharmacy playing a central role in furthering
patient safety within the hospital environment as a whole.
"Bernstein and
Associates had the vision we needed to create a hospital
pharmacy that combined architecture, engineering, art and
education to establish a model for intelligent design, "
explains Dr. Allan Cohen, the SBCH Pharmacy Director. "This
pharmacy will be one that meets our needs now and for years into
the future".
About Santa Barbara
Cottage Hospital:
Founded in 1888, this 408-bed acute care teaching hospital the
largest of its kind between Los Angeles and the San Francisco
Bay area
is committed to patient safety and providing the highest
quality health care to the growing communities of greater Santa
Barbara. For more information about Santa Barbara Cottage
Hospital, see
www.cottagehealthsystem.org.
About Bernstein &
Associates, Architects:
Bernstein & Associates, Architects specializes in pharmacy
design, including the architectural design, engineering design
and construction of USP 797-compliant pharmacies. Since the
introduction of USP 797, Bernstein & Associates, Architects has
been on the forefront of USP 797-compliant architectural design.
The firm's principal, William
N. Bernstein, AIA, has written extensively on USP 797. Over the
past five years, Bernstein & Associates, Architects has designed
twenty USP 797-compliant pharmacies, a number of which have been
featured in architectural and healthcare publications. For
more information about pharmacy design, including USP 797
compliant design, see
www.bernarch.com.
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