REGISTERED NURSE Danny Fields and ETMC Fairfield Director of Nursing Beth Harrison demonstrate how the automated medication management system operates. Pictured are: l-r, Danny Fields, Beth Harrison, and Program Monitor for the Office of Rural Community Affairs Jim Davis. With a $50,000 capital improvement grant from the Office of Rural Community Affairs, East Texas Medical Center Hospital in Fairfield purchased an automated medication management system to make the medication management process simpler, safer and more secure.

The hospital purchased the new system in July of 2008.

With three station consoles located in emergency, surgery, and in-patient, the PYXIS MedStation 3500 System creates a more efficient method of dispensing medication and tracking inventory levels.

Medications can be accessed at each of the three stations through fingerprint identification. The system bills patients when pharmaceuticals are removed from the machine and creates a patient profile allowing access to only those medications for that patient.

When levels of one drug begin to run low, a report is sent to LVN and pharmacy technician Margaret restock the needed medication.

Office of Rural Community Affairs program monitor Jim Davis visited ETMC Fairfield last week to see the technology the hospital had purchased using the grant money.

"It's really quite remarkable," says Davis of the automated system.