Just for Fun: What To Do With Leftover Pill Bottles
May 22, 2013

Do you have extra pill bottles lying around? Don’t throw them away! Here are some interesting, creative, and funny ideas of how to repurpose all your old (and ugly) orange pill bottles!

1. Build a chandelier. Artist Jean Shin created these masterpieces from leftover bottles collected from pharmacies, individuals, and nursing homes.

     

2. Hide a Key. Glue a rock to the top of a pill bottle, place an extra key in the bottle, and push bottle into dirt.

 

3. Lighting Options. Two great ideas for interesting and festive lighting. Garland - Safely punch a hole into the bottom of each bottle. Insert light. Lamp - Find or make a large box.

 

4. Organize Your (Little) Stuff.  A little colorful paper, a little glue, a little label and voila! all your safety pins, buttons, coins, beads, paper clips, push pins, and other nick knacks are organized, sorted, and contained.

 

New C.E. Credits for 2014 Seminar!
May 16, 2013

   

You spoke, and we listened. So we are adding additional Pharmacist C.E. credits for the 2014 Integra User Training Seminar. The always popular Dr. Brad Kile, PhD as along with his colleague Leigh Davitian, JD will present three one-hour courses that examine various aspects of current legislation and regulations that impact pharmacies. From these sessions, pharmacists can earn up to three hours of live C.E. credits. The classes are listed below along with short descriptions. Full details of the classes can be viewed at the Seminar website: http://www.integragroup.com/support/user-seminar/#/ce-credit/.

Class 1: Implementation schedule of the Affordable Care Act  (ACA) and key benchmarks of the law.
This program will examine the 10-year implementation schedule of the ACA and evaluate which policies are priorities for the government.  Participants will learn which policies are being implemented on time and which policies may be delayed or not implemented at all.

Class 2: Review new payment models emerging as a result of the ACA.
The program will evaluate new financial incentives for providers with Accountable Care Organizations, bundled payments, and value-based purchasing. Participants will learn about how to take advantage of new opportunities to diversify and expand their services.

Class 3: Expansion of health coverage through increases in Medicaid eligibility and the launch of HEI
Expansion of health coverage through of increases in Medicaid eligibility and the launch of Health Insurance Exchanges (HEI) – both of which are set to begin in January 2014.  The ACA guarantees that by 2014, all citizens will have access to an HEI, irrespective of the state in which they live.  The ACA also opens Medicaid eligibility to individuals under 65 years of age with income below 133 percent of the federal poverty level.  Kile and Davitian will explain the impact of expanded coverage on the demand for health care services.  The timing of this program is perfect since these major policies will have been implemented just a few weeks prior to the 2014 User Training Seminar in New Orleans.

Check Out May's Comic!
May 13, 2013

Check out this month's comic!

2013 Seminar Recap
May 8, 2013

For those of you who were unable to attend the User Seminar in Orlando, here’s a brief recap. The keynote speech by Jason Young on “Culturetopia: The Ultimate High Performance Workplace” was a huge success, Dr. Brad Kile did an amazing job with his C.E credits class, and, when not attending classes, over 60 pharmacies kept our Account Managers busy in one-on-one sessions. The exhibit hall buzzed with activity as over 30 vendors displayed their products and technologies, and many attendees commented on how much they liked our new Drop in Lab. By far one of the biggest hits was the luau dinner event on Wednesday night. Integra staff and seminar attendees enjoyed a colorful show, excellent food, and laughing at each other’s attempts at hula dancing.

As for next year, we have some exciting changes. First, we’re moving to a completely open schedule. What this means is attendees can see all the classes offered during each class period and can choose what classes to attend. Second, we’re exploring some new class options. For example, we’re looking at adding some advanced classes, restructuring the PIS breakouts, adding additional CE credits, and much, much more. As we get closer to January 21-23, 2014, make sure to check the seminar pages of our website for further details.

Once again, thank you to all those who attended this year and made this year’s Seminar a success. We hope to see you in New Orleans in 2014! Registration opens June 1, 2013.

To view photos from this year’s event, click here.

DeliveryTrack Upcoming Features - Historical Routing
May 6, 2013

Set for a summer release, DeliveryTrack 4.1 will have many exciting new features and updates. One such feature is Historical Routing. This feature will allow pharmacy operators to view up to three months of history on a specific route.With detailed information about route trends, management can make decisions about chronic route deviations, anomalies, and driver specific trends in order to increase a route's efficiency.

Stay tuned for progress updates over the next few months! 

Visit the Integra Booth #337 Armada Business Summit
May 3, 2013

The 2013 Armada Specialty Pharmacy Summit is taking place next week – May 7-10 – in Las Vegas. Armada Health Care advances the interests of specialty pharmacies. It keeps attendees of the summit informed about current trends and provides insight into potential future market changes with the goal of transferring healthcare trends into successful business opportunities.

Many industry leaders, from pharmaceutical manufacturers to service vendors, will attend the summit to showcase their solutions…including Integra. Stop by booth #337 to see how DocuTrack and DeliveryTrack can improve your pharmacy’s bottom line. Or just stop to say hi. We look forward to seeing many of you there!

FDA Approves 'Morning-After Pill' for Girls 15+
May 1, 2013

US health regulators today approved the emergency oral contraceptive Plan B One-Step (Teva Women's Health, Inc) for sale without a prescription to girls aged 15 years and older. The active ingredient in Plan B is levonorgestrel. In a statement, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said Plan B will now be labeled "not for sale to those under 15 years of age *proof of age required* not for sale where age cannot be verified."

Teva will make the product available in retail outlets with an on-site pharmacy, where it generally will be available in the family-planning or female health aisles. Teva said it will educate consumers, pharmacy staff, and healthcare professionals about the product's new status. It has also indicated its willingness to conduct an audit of the age-verification practices after the product is approved to ensure that the age limitation is being followed.

Noticed Something New?
Apr 24, 2013

You have probably noticed our new website design. Well that’s just one part of a company-wide redesign plan our Marketing department has been working on this past year. As a software company, staying up to date with the latest technology is a must. Because technology and information change so quickly, being outdated is a quick way for companies to spiral down. So, to keep our information and public image fresh and up to date, we have redesigned our website, newsletter, marketing material, training material, and are in the process of updating our tradeshow booth.  We hope this commitment to progress in all aspects of our company matches our commitment to our products and services.

Check out some of the new designs in the sheets below!

New DocuTrack Datasheet

New DocuTrack 1000 Datasheet

New DeliveryTrack Datasheet

Tips & Tricks: St. Mary’s LTC Pharmacy
Apr 22, 2013

In this special guest post, Susan Parolari, RPh of St. Mary’s LTC Pharmacy in Michigan discusses how they use Forms to document various pharmacy activities and their use of Document Import Rules to streamline filling prescriptions. Many DocuTrack pharmacies use these practices already, but for those who don’t, these are two great features of DocuTrack.

1.  At St. Mary’s, we use DocuTrack Forms and Private Searches to document, organize, file, and report pharmacy interventions, med occurrences, and incidents. Here’s how we do it.

  • Set up a specific Doc Type for the Forms, and use Priorities to define the type of occurrence.
  • Use a custom field to identify the packaging type, facility, or pharmacist involved. Options are as endless as your imagination. 
  • Use Private Searches to report incidents or find the reports easily.

2.  For our Document Import Rules, we have refills and New Orders routed on import without our peoples’ intervention. Refills are automatically triaged to the day they need to be processed, so we only see what New Orders need to be processed today. 

For more information contact Integra Support.

FDA Inspects Compounding Pharmacies
Apr 18, 2013