Name: Dave Cukier

Pharmacy: Community Clinical Pharmacy

Address: Phoenix, Arizona

Phone: (602)-969-0600

Fax: None

Brief Description of Innovation:

A major medical complex in Phoenix, Arizona needed three separate pharmacies in different locations in different buildings. This needed to be accomplished at the lowest possible cost. Dave Cukier, head of the pharmacy department, set up one central pharmacy, which serves three different satellite pharmacies that are located in the three different sites needed, and it is also open to the general public like any other retail pharmacy. He is able to serve the satellite pharmacies by using a tube system, which the medical complex already had in existence, to transfer prescriptions from the central pharmacy to the satellite pharmacy. This greatly reduces costs because it prevents each of the three satellite pharmacies from having to have its own inventory, therefore one inventory takes the place of three. Additionally Dave has installed a closed circuit video system between each of the satellite pharmacies and the central pharmacy. By doing this the pharmacist in the central pharmacy can counsel the patient in any of the satellite pharmacies via live video. The patient and pharmacist are both able to see each other and communicate as if they were both only a few feet apart, when in all actuality they are in two totally separate buildings over distances of up to nine hundred feet apart. This again saves a great deal of expense because each of the satellite pharmacies can be staffed by a pharmacy technician, which is paid considerably less than a pharmacist.

Reimbursement for this type of pharmacy setup is exactly the same as in other pharmacies.

Again this pharmacy operates as any other pharmacy and there is no special documentation required.

The only special training is simply to familiarize yourself with the tube delivery system and the closed circuit video system.

The original computer system of the pharmacy was able to be used, by installing three more terminals, one for each satellite pharmacy. Therefore, no new software was necessary and all the pharmacies are on the same computer system.