Tech Talks in CMMS
with Guest Tom Birkness

Dan Roberge
Nice to meet you, Tom. Thank you for talking to me. What do you do? Where are you from? What's the background?

Tom Birkness
Nice to meet you too, Dan. I'm the director of clinical services for National Pharmacy. So what National Pharmacy does is we service predominantly retirement homes and long term care facilities. Some other types of facilities as well, but predominantly those two. So we provide medications for them. We fill their prescriptions, and we provide other pharmaceutical care for them. So we go to the homes, we ensure they're in compliance with all the rules, and we also review medications for the residents, and provide suggestions, recommendations to physicians.

Dan Roberge
Oh wow. Okay. So I guess there's a lot of automation built around dispensing of the medication. So tell me a bit about what you have for that technology and how that works.

Tom Birkness
Yeah. So since we're doing so many prescriptions for so many people, we use a packing machine that actually puts the medications into these little plastic pouches. So you remember in the old days, you used to go to the corner store and they'd have a strip of suckers and those little plastic.

Dan Roberge
Oh, yeah.

Tom Birkness
Yeah, it's kind of like that. So you get a strip for every resident that lasts for a week, and it has all their medications in there, and every pouch is for a different time of day. And it lists the medications on them and whatnot. So, it's a lot easier for the staff to take them out and get them to the right person. It helps eliminate mistakes and errors, and it also frees up more time for the staff of the home to be with the residents, instead of doing things like giving out drugs, because they're not having to figure out which one do I give now? And so on.

Dan Roberge
And so now do you have integration with systems, let's say like Point Click Care, like that?

Tom Birkness
Yeah, absolutely. So our pharmacy system, we're on a pretty common pharmacy system, Pearl, which does integrate with those big platforms like Point Click Care, so that we can enter medication orders and the facility gets them on their electronic MAR. So it's definitely the most common way things are done now, although there's still a few homes that are doing pencil and paper.

Dan Roberge
Really?

Tom Birkness
Believe it or not. Or pens and paper.

Dan Roberge
Yeah.

Tom Birkness
That's right. It's kind of a throwback.

Dan Roberge
Yeah. And so tell me a bit more about going on site and doing those audits of like, are they getting the right medication and so on. Like how does that work?

Tom Birkness
Well, that's what I'm in charge of. I have a number of pharmacists who go to the home to do that. That report to me. But I've also been doing it for a number of years. I go to my own homes as well. Okay. So what we typically do is before I go to the home, I will look at a resident's medications, and I'll try to pick a people who benefit the most from a review at that time.

Tom Birkness
So I'll look for certain key medications which might be high risk, that type of thing, or which may indicate that there's another problem going on. If we have lots of residents with dementia and there's some drugs used to treat dementia, that that can be a little bit tricky, have a lot of side effects and those types of things. So I try to I try to sort that out. Residents who have a lot of medications, polypharmacy, we call it, it's always an issue. So I kind of find the ones that might benefit the most from a medication review at that time, and I usually have a look at it before I go to the home. And then when I get there, I can ask the care staff all the questions I have. If somebody's on an antidepressant, I'll probably ask, you know, how is Mr. So-and-so doing? Is he staying in his room a lot, or does he come out and join activities? You know, I'm trying to get a feel for if they're being treated adequately or not.

Dan Roberge
Okay.

Tom Birkness
Right. So then I can make recommendations to the physician based on that type of thing.

Dan Roberge
Wow. And how big is your team that does that? Because how many homes would you do for that service?

Tom Birkness
Well, typically one consultant pharmacist would do about 1,000 beds. But that depends obviously on the home. We have a lot of retirement homes that are fairly small, 40 or 50 beds, and then there's a lot of long term care facilities that are a couple hundred beds. So, you know, you can have five long term care homes or you can have 30. But, you know, frankly, going to these smaller homes and seeing the people there, it's actually a lot of fun. I've been doing it for a long time, and it's one of the things I enjoy about my job is I get out there and I get to meet all these people and, you know, typically they're very dedicated to what they're doing, and they're providing a service to a kind of overlooked segment of the population.

Dan Roberge
That's amazing.

Tom Birkness
Yeah. It's fun.

Dan Roberge
What's your background? What got you into this? Like, you have to have a medical background, of course.

Tom Birkness
Well, back in the day, I got a chemistry degree. And then my dad said to me, what are you going to do now? And I said, I don't know. He said, why don't you become a pharmacist? Oh, that's a good idea. So I became a pharmacist. I went down to the States and I did a doctorate in pharmacy. You couldn't do them in Canada when I did it, which dates me a little bit, but that's life. So yeah. So I have a doctorate of pharmacy, which is a clinical degree. But again, like you said, it's kind of in the allied health profession. So we hire pharmacists, typically pharmacists with extra training in geriatrics, and those types of things. Or diabetes care etc., things that are common in that population.

Dan Roberge
Nice nice. Where do people find out more about your company and your services?

Tom Birkness
You know, we have a website, National Pharmacy. Just type that in your browser. You will find us, and we're on there. And you know, we're at the trade show obviously, come to our booth if you happen to be here, that'd be great. But otherwise come to our website, give us a call. We'd be happy to chat with you, to talk about your needs and see if we can work together.

Dan Roberge
Amazing. Thank you very much for talking to me. It was great.

Tom Birkness
My pleasure. Nice to meet you, Dan.