Each October, American Pharmacists Month recognizes the pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, and student pharmacists who help improve health and care for communities across the country.
This year's theme, "Caring for Our Communities," is especially fitting for the pharmacy professionals who serve our nations Veterans.
Across the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), pharmacists are an important part of the clinical teams responsible for delivering safe, effective care. Their role can become particularly complex in infusion therapy, where chemotherapy, immunotherapy, and other specialty treatments require close coordination among pharmacists, physicians, nurses, and other clinicians.
Pharmacists may be responsible for validating complex treatment plans, reviewing dosing calculations, confirming medication orders, and helping ensure therapies can be administered safely. Giving them better tools to manage that complexity is one-way DSS helps support the people who care for the Veteran community every day.
DSS developed Infusion Therapy Manager (ITM) to help clinician teams manage complex infusion therapy with greater consistency and confidence. The web-based clinical decision support solutions integrate evidence-based protocols into an intuitive workflow and support clinicians across multiple specialties, including oncology.
For pharmacists, ITM supports many of the responsibilities central to their role. The solution manages standardized treatment protocols, dynamically calculates doses using patient specific information, validates orders in real time, feeds orders directly into VistA, and tracks actions for greater traceability and accountability.
These capabilities can help pharmacists spend less time navigating manual processes and more time applying their clinical expertise to the safe delivery of care.
Medication safety is especially important in infusion therapy, where treatment plans can involve complex dosing requirements and high-risk medications. Manual orders and dosing calculations can introduce patient safety risks, while lengthy validation processes can add complexity to the pharmacist's workflow.
ITM builds safety checks into the clinical workflow through patient specific dose calculations, real-time order validation, and standardized treatment plans.
The solution also supports collaboration among physicians, pharmacists, nurses, and other clinicians involved in infusion therapy. Role specific workflows help align with the care team, while direct integration with VistA supports continuity with the VA electronic health record.
Although ITM was originally focused on oncology workflows, it was designed to support infusion reliant specialties including gastroenterology, rheumatology, endocrinology, and other specialty areas supported by infusion suites. It also builds on DSS VistA Chemotherapy Manager (VCM), currently deployed at more than 40 VA health care facilities nationwide.
The theme of this year's American Pharmacists Month is a reminder that pharmacy has always been about more than medications. Pharmacists are health care providers, collaborators, and trusted members of the communities they serve.
At VA, that community includes Veterans who depend on dedicated clinical teams to deliver safe, reliable care. DSS shares that commitment by developing technology that supports the clinicians serving them.
American Pharmacists Month is an opportunity to recognize those professionals and the expertise they bring to Veteran care every day. Supporting pharmacists with technology designed around the realities of their work is one more way to help them continue caring for our communities.
Contact DSS today to learn more about how Infusion Therapy Manager can support pharmacists and clinical teams delivering safe, coordinated infusion therapy for Veterans. Subscribe to our blog page to stay informed of the stores that matter to you.