Absolute Pharmacy: a Message from Our Chief Operating Officer

By Kevin Fearon, RPh, Chief Operating Officer, Absolute Pharmacy

 

I sincerely hope this message finds you well. I want to extend a big thanks to the entire healthcare workforce for responding to the worst pandemic and crisis in our lifetime. Our current crisis has certainly created awareness of our lifestyles: the things we touch, how we wash our hands, and our social engagement with family, friends and others. I have been a pharmacist practicing in Long Term Care for 36 years. I have never had to review so many aspects associated with the pharmacy supply chain. The healthcare industry quickly collaborated to make quick decisions knowing the integrity of our processes are critical to protecting our senior clients, the most vulnerable to COVID-19.

 

Like most companies, our employees and vendors’ instituted new policies and procedures to ensure they were not inadvertent carriers of the Coronavirus. What at first seemed like overkill, thermometers, screening tools, and triaging became a sign of a company doing the right things and adopting best practices to defend the spread of a deadly virus. The pharmacy supply chain considerations are endless: what drugs will be in demand, sourcing, quality, packaging, distribution, and reverse processing all had to undergo detailed review, risk evaluation, and elimination of unneeded touchpoints. Most important for Absolute Pharmacy has been to continue to provide essential services and maintain medication availability seamlessly to nursing facilities to help place their efforts on protecting patients and not on drug procurement.

 

 

I hope there are things we learn and improve from the pandemic. It certainly places perspective on the fact that we are one humanity and each of us plays a critical role in doing our part with the continuum of care. How we collaborate to arrive at best practices and communicating with the other health care providers connects all of us into one system. Regulatory agencies removing long time barriers for the industry and expanding the scope of practice for providers to improve care has helped us navigate through this crisis. Taking care of others, especially seniors, takes a person with a certain skill set, and temperament. A mistake or undesired outcome could result in negative press headlines. In the midst of all this, I hope acts of good care and kindness do not go unnoticed. I encourage all of us to continue to work hard, to fight to keep the meaningful relief provisions, acknowledge kind acts, and to learn to improve our healthcare delivery to seniors.