Case Study: Fort HealthCare achieves safer, faster medication administration with Cerner's RxStation

Making meds administration safer, more efficient at Fort Healthcare

Fort HealthCare, a 72‑bed hospital in Fort Atkinson, Wis., faced inefficiencies and safety risks with its legacy medication-dispensing process, which relied on a single drawer requiring manual selection and forced pharmacy staff to consult multiple applications for diversion reporting. These workflows increased medication‑administration time and limited nurses’ ability to educate patients at the bedside.

In June 2015 the hospital implemented Cerner’s RxStation automated dispensing system, which delivers single medications per transaction and consolidates dispensing, administration and waste data. The change improved safety, cut an average 20 seconds per medication transaction, freed nurses to spend more uninterrupted time educating patients (correlating with a nearly 10‑point rise in HCAHPS communication about medicines in three months), and reduced pharmacy reporting time by more than half.

Fort Healthcare

Pam Kuehl

Inpatient Director