A dose of safety

Business finds success overseeing prescriptions

Thursday, May 18, 2006
by Steve Earley
Staff Writer

In a 1999 Institute of Medicine report that revealed more than 7,000 people die each year from medication errors, Christopher Keeys saw an opportunity. A well-known risk factor for medication errors at hospitals – the absence of a pharmacist to double check physician drug orders during the overnight shift – could be eliminated, the Laurel pharmacist reasoned, by giving medical centers remote access to a pharmacist through phone or Internet lines.

While the field of telemedicine is nothing new – it has been widely adopted among radiologists and used extensively by the military – Keeys said he and business partner Kenneth Dandurand were the first to adapt it for pharmacy services.

The two, who 20 years ago founded Clinical Pharmacy Associates, a pharmacy management and consulting firm in Greenbelt and Beltsville, launched MedNovations in 2001.

Under the business model, MedNovations checks a physician’s drug order against a patient’s history and the hospital's recommended practices. Patient allergies, potentially dangerous drug interactions and unusually high dosage levels, perhaps the result of a smudged decimal point, are among the items MedNovations pharmacists reviews. While telepharmacy is possible with as a little as a telephone and fax line, higher-tech systems allow MedNovations to remotely control the dispensing of medicine, Keeys said.

‘‘The machine will not release the product to the nurse until the pharmacist has checked that the dose is right,” he said.

Smaller hospitals, whose limited resources and low patient volume can make having a pharmacist on staff at night prohibitive, can especially benefit from telepharmacy, Keeys said.

The firm aims to turnaround orders within one hour or less – a goal Keeys said it achieves at least 80 percent of the time – but in emergencies complete a review in as little as 15 minutes, he said.

MedNovations can also act as an emergency backup for a pharmacy’s daytime operations, ready to take over in the event of a major snowstorm or other disaster, Keeys added.

MedNovations, which along with Clinical Pharmacy Associates relocated to Laurel in 2003, is among less than 10 known telepharmacy companies, according to the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists.

‘‘It’s fairly new,” said Doug Scheckelhoff, the director of Pharmacy Practice Sections for the 30,000-member Bethesda-based trade group. In fall 2005, the most recent data available, 12.2 percent of the nation’s hospitals used an off-site pharmacy service, he said.

Keeys, 48, said MedNovations is a ‘‘multi-million-dollar company,” but, citing competitors, declined to provide specifics about the company’s finances.

With 28 employees at its Talbott Avenue, Laurel, headquarters and a six-employee staff in Westfield, Mass., MedNovations has contracted to provide remote pharmacy services to just under 30 medical institutions in 10 states, including Laurel Regional Hospital and four other hospitals in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, Keeys said.

‘‘I see this being a significant model for bridging the gap that’s going to be here for a long time,” he said of a national pharmacist shortage that, as baby boomers being to retire, he expects to only worsen.

E-mail Steve Earley at searley@gazette.net.

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