The term is “drug diversion,” and it’s a risk present for any pharmacy. There’s always the chance that when counting out, say, oxycodone capsules prescribed to manage pain after a surgery, some of those pills disappear.
Precautions taken to reduce possible diversion incidents fit into a larger web of substance use management underway in Southwest Colorado.
On Aug. 6, the Montezuma County Board of County Commissioners voted unanimously to approve a letter of support to Southwest Health System’s retail pharmacy as the health care provider seeks out grant money to buy an automated pill counter.
If purchased, the pill counter would assist in ensuring patients receive properly counted prescriptions and keep drugs – namely controlled substances – flowing where they’re meant to, Kelsey Gilbert, pharmacy director at SHS told commissioners during an Aug. 5 meeting.
Gilbert described the machine as helping the pharmacy remain “very full circle,” helping with “keeping opioids to the right people who need them for medical reasons and then out of the hands of other people.”
Funds to buy the pill counter are being requested from SWORD, the regional opioid abatement council for Southwest Colorado. SWORD oversees a slice from a larger total of millions in opioid settlement money awarded to the state. In mid-July, the council announced about $450,000 available through grant money that aims to lessen the blows of harms caused by substance use.
The machine that the SHS pharmacy aims to buy is highly advanced, capable of capturing photos of a pill tray five times per second, according to the manufacturer’s description.
Total costs for the Eyecon 9430 automated pill counter would be about $18,000, Jaycee Hart, SHS marketing specialist, told The Journal in an email.
Those costs include aligning the machine with the pharmacy’s software and educating staff, she said.
According to Hart, no drug diversion incidents have been reported at the pharmacy since its opening in 2018.
“However, that being said we don't want to put our staff at risk and feel this is a great safety measure to not only keep staff accountable, but also to protect them from any false accusations,” Hart said.
Without an automated pill counter handy, staff work hard to keep tabs on drugs going through the pharmacy, she said.
“Our current workflow is very laborious but provides the checks and balances necessary to prevent diversion.”
The Eyecon 9430 would certainly make everything more secure, Hart said.
“That’s a very fancy pill counter that they’re asking for,” said Robert Valuck, executive director of the Colorado Consortium for Prescription Drug Abuse Prevention and a trained pharmacist. “Its kind of a top-of-the-line pill counter.”
Valuck said that improvements have been made in pharmacies over the past several decades to prevent drug diversion, but the possibility is always there.
Legal standards exist to keep pharmacies in check, Valuck said. Additionally, organizations like the National Association of Drug Diversion Investigators work to counter the risk, he said.
Most hospital pharmacies that have been surveyed report having a dedicated surveillance team and detection software for monitoring controlled substances, although their practices can vary.
“It’s still not impossible to break these systems and get by, but its getting harder,” Valuck said.
SWORD is expected to announce grant awardees sometime in the beginning of December.
