Technology has revolutionized everything from banking to booking travel, and the same holds true for CBHA’s pharmacy and its patients.

Tim Seibel, CBHA Director of Ancillary Services, oversees the Pharmacy. He is excited about the new Liberty technology system that was recently installed. An important advantage with the new system is that it has a custom interface that allows pharmacy staff to talk to a patient’s electronic medical record – a big improvement. Changes to one are automatically updated in the other, so the medical and pharmacy charts always match.

“Problems have come up in the past when people have hyphenated last names,” Seibel said. “Sometimes they might sign in with both names and sometimes with just one name. This has resulted in a patient being listed in one system with just one last name and two names in another system. This new system allowing us to create all the accounts at the same time allows us to be consistent throughout the clinic.”

The new system, based on a few pieces of information such as date of birth and social security number, allows pharmacy staff to do an insurance look up on a patient who might not have their health card along by pressing a button and, with a 70 to 75% success rate, pull the patient’s information up from a secure connection on the internet. Patients can bring their card in at a later date for confirmation.

Patients who go through the CBHA drive through to pick up their medications quickly notice that the system is now wireless. The patient is handed an iPad, they sign and hand it back. Inside, it’s also more reliable.

CBHA pharmacy will also released a mobile app that patients can use to refill medications. “We are constantly looking to develop new technology that makes it easier for patients to access CBHA services," Seibel said. “We are constantly looking to develop new technology that makes it easier for patients to access CBHA services.”

CBHA is a community health center. As such it is eligible to obtain discounts on many of the drugs it buys. These discounts are then passed along to our patients and generally result in cheaper drug prices to many of our patients – especially those without insurance.

“Our patients benefit directly from this program,” Seibel said. “It is also the reason we can’t fill prescriptions from physicians who do not treat patients at our clinics. However, if a patient is referred to an outside clinic by one of our medical providers, any prescriptions written by the outside provider can be filled at a CBHA clinic.”