Medication management system vendor Bestmed has partnered with pharmacy professional services provider Choice Aged Care to integration their systems, allowing data to be securely transferred between Bestmed’s medication management system and Choice Aged Care’s PPASS3 auditing and benchmarking system.

The integration has been tried and tested on a large scale with Southern Cross Care NSW/ACT, having gone live late last year. The plan is to allow care providers to streamline and automate various data entry, reporting and clinical governance workflows.

Bestmed CEO Phil Offer said the integration with Choice Aged Care will give providers increased visibility to benchmark their use of medications and drive continuous improvement in medication management and reporting.

Choice Aged Care CEO Michael Bonner said one of the key benefits of the integration was workflow efficiencies captured for facility staff by eliminating the need for time-consuming and error-prone manual data entry.

“According to early anecdotal evidence, the automated data flow from Bestmed to PPASS-3 more than halves the facility staff workload relating to the ACQSC’s psychotropic self-assessment activity,” Mr Bonner said.

It will also improve accuracy, higher-level clinical governance and real-time risk alerts.

Southern Cross Care (NSW & ACT) COO Gaynor Squillacioti said adopting new technologies was instrumental to improving the well-being of aged care residents and the efficiency of those providing care.

“The integration of this system in all our residential aged care homes has significantly improved medication management efficiency and governance,” Ms Squillacioti said. “Through data automation, our team is advancing our reporting requirements and optimising clinical outcomes associated with polypharmacy and psychotropic medication.”

Bestmed is best known for its eNRMC medication management system, while Choice Aged Care also provides residential medication management review, quality use of medicines and training services.