Our business guide offers helpful insights on successful medication management and the critical role of polypharmacy and deprescribing.

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If it feels like medication management is consuming more of your clinical staff’s time than it should, you’re not imagining it. Long-term care facilities are managing a consistent uptick in residents with more complex medication regimens, multiple comorbidities, and significant documentation requirements. There is simply more work to do, and facilities are trying to absorb that complexity with thinner staffing and outdated processes.

The signs of a medication management problem are usually familiar to anyone running a facility:

• Nursing staff spending significant time on pharmacy-related administrative work instead of direct resident care
• Recurring survey citations tied to medication documentation, or
• A pattern of near-misses that never quite becomes a reportable incident but keeps everyone on edge

In most cases, the root issue isn’t a lack of effort from clinical staff – it’s a system that hasn’t been redesigned to match the complexity of today’s resident population. Manual reconciliation processes, inconsistent communication between shifts, and a pharmacy partner that fills prescriptions but doesn’t offer clinical engagement all compound the problem.

Facilities that get ahead of medication management strain typically make three changes: they bring in consultant pharmacist support for regular, structured medication reviews; they standardize how medication changes are documented and communicated across shifts; and they use technology to reduce manual reconciliation work rather than adding another spreadsheet to track.

Omnicare’s consultant pharmacists work directly with facility clinical staff to identify where medication management is breaking down and build a more sustainable process – one that reduces risk without adding to your team’s workload.

If medication management has been a persistent pain point at your facility, we’d like to hear the specifics. Request a consultation and we’ll talk through what’s actually driving the strain and how to address it.