Since the pandemic first took hold around the world, maintaining good hygiene has been one of the enduring guidelines for staying healthy. We’ve all made practices like frequent handwashing, wearing a mask, and maintaining a six-foot distance and limiting contact from others part of our everyday lifestyle with the hope that they will prevent COVID-19 from spreading. As businesses that are essential to their communities’ health, pharmacies have had to take extra precaution to keep their patients and
employees safe.

The CDC has advised pharmacies to minimize time customers spend on the premises and limit contact between and staff and patients as much as possible. With the high business volume that pharmacies see, it can be difficult to get customers in and out of the pharmacy quickly with their questions answered and everything they need. During a time when safety and hygiene are the top priority, pharmacy automation can be a key factor towards maintaining a healthy environment in the pharmacy.

Time Saving 

Of the many guidelines that have been put in place to prevent the spread of COVID-19, keeping a safe distance from others may be one of the most important and most difficult to maintain. If a pharmacy is busy, it’s difficult to get people in and out quickly and efficiently while still providing them with good service. Pharmacy automation can save pharmacy staff time, allowing customers to spend less time in public in contact with others.

Reconstituting medications is a unique task in the pharmacy workflow that often leads to customers standing around waiting. Unlike prescriptions for pills and tablets, reconstituted medications can’t be filled ahead of time. They must be reconstituted when the customer arrives to pick them up. During a pandemic when people are being encouraged to spend less time in businesses, automating reconstitution can help reduce customers’ wait time. A pharmacy water dispenser can reduce the time needed to reconstitute a medication from minutes to mere seconds. That’s less time a customer must spend waiting in the pharmacy in contact with pharmacy employees and other customers.

Reduced contact

Pharmacy, like the rest of the world, has been turned upside down since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. With all of the changes that have come about over the past few months and fewer kids getting normal illnesses that come with being together in school, maybe your flavoring program hasn’t been a priority. Now that we’re heading into cough, cold, and flu and season, it’s time to dust off those bottles of Bubblegum and Sweetening Enhancer and get back to helping kids take their medicine. 

While most medicines for pets could be improved by adding a flavor, there are a few medicines that you should always offer to flavor, every time they’re dispensed. Whether the medicine has a particularly bad taste that makes it difficult to give to a pet, or the medicine is extremely important to the pet’s health, adding a tasty flavor ensures that the pet takes the entire dose. Here are five of our "must flavor" medicines for pets, and what you can do to make the medication process easier on both pets and their humans:

1.Gabapentin (Neurontin)

As a pharmacy professional, you've probably witnessed the benefit FLAVORx can have for children's health. But kids aren't the only members of the family whose health is often affected by failure to comply to a medication regimen. Pets need their medicine too, and trying to give it to them can often lead to a scared pet, a stressed pet owner, and an incomplete dose. 

When FLAVORx first began 28 years ago, we were a small company with a big idea about helping kids take their medicine. We would never be where we are today without the pharmacies that believed in our mission since the very beginning. Apple Discount Drugs, located on Maryland's Eastern Shore, is one of those pharmacies that has been with us since we got started in 1995 and is still one of our valued partners to this day.

We spoke with Marketing Director Tish Withers, who gave us some insight on what makes this local pharmacy so special and what FLAVORx means to their pharmacy. As we celebrate our 28th anniversary, we'd like to take a moment to spotlight this pharmacy that has been with us throughout this journey.