Protecting High-Cost Medications with Continuous Monitoring

Pharmacies are the go-to source for life-saving medications, especially ones which treat rare diseases and disorders. The costs of these drugs can be quite high. More than ever, maintaining vaccines, insulin, and other pharmaceuticals at their optimal temperature is paramount to ensure their efficacy.

Otherwise, you run the risk of even higher costs if damaged drugs need to be replaced or re-administered due to degraded quality.  Unfortunately, subjecting drugs to unsafe temperatures is all too common at pharmacies.

A Wealth of High Cost Medications

Patients and pharmacies greatly benefit from new medications that can be administered at home rather than at a doctor’s office. Products such as anti-rejection drugs, chemotherapy medications, and biologics can be costly. Many of these medications are more commonly prescribed as the population ages and technology advances, requiring that larger inventories be stored at the proper temperature while at retail outlets.

In some cases, insurance companies can protect pharmacies from product loss due to refrigeration failure or power outages. But, the costliest inventories may exceed insurance coverage limits by significant amounts. Reports of pharmacies losing over $100,000 of refrigerated medications are no longer a rare phenomenon.

The High Cost of Improper Temperatures

Many studies have shown that medications exposed to temperatures above or below their recommended values lose their potency or become inactive. For examples, consult the following:

• AAPS PharmSciTech
• U.S. Pharmacopeia
• Frequency and Causes of Vaccine Wastage

Compounding the problem, managers and pharmacists who are untrained in temperature monitoring may have no idea the risks involved with faulty refrigerators or freezers—including lawsuits. Pharmacy operators dealing with these risks will then need to work with insurers to determine if their retail outlets are protected from litigation.

Reduce Loss with Automatic Temperature Monitoring

The most effective method of minimizing loss due to improper temperature is to install continuous monitoring solutions within pharmacy refrigerators and freezers. These devices send out alerts and alarm messages when temperatures reach unsafe limits. Specific solutions include cellular-based wireless sensors, cloud-based data collection, and analytical reporting.

Be cautious when selecting continuous temperature monitoring devices. Many rely on in-store computers or Wi-Fi networks which can fail during electrical power outages. This time is precisely when an alarm is essential—but will not be triggered.

Take Action

Pharmacists and pharmacy operators can take the following steps to prevent the loss of high cost medications due to temperature fluctuations:

• Review the performance of your prescription refrigerators and freezers for stability and reliability.
• Use continuous temperature monitoring to help ensure medications are maintained within proper temperature ranges.

• Assess your medications according to a daily, weekly, monthly, and seasonal schedule to capture their actual value and potential exposure at any particular retail store over the course of a year.

By combining automatic temperature monitoring and accurate inventory values, you’ll get a complete picture of the potential risks as well as insight into methods that reduce them.

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