What was Talyst's response to your misdrops?? I am curious to hear other's experiences with Talyst before I expound on my thoughts.

Name of Facility: Arnot Ogden Medical Center

City, State: Elmira, NY

Whenever we have a misdrop they first tell us to make sure the machine is clean. So we do a thorough cleaning whenever anything happens, in addition to our daily cleaning log. How often are you getting misdrops? I save any bad packets that it spits out to try to predict what causes it. Up to this point I haven't completely figured it out. One problem we were having is too many tablets/capsules in the canister. Sometimes you can still get the lid on to an overfill canister. When a canister is overfilled it spins and breaks/crushes tablets/capsules and it also forces out extra ones. See which canisters you are having problems with because it could also be the size of the comb that guides the tablets. It could be letting more than one tablet/capsule through. We just had our first yearly update in March, where the tech comes out and takes the whole machine apart and cleans it. It had been running smoothly since then. We have a really good tech who is very helpful. Most of all the information I have is from him.

Name of Facility: Roxborough Memorial Hospital

City, State: Philadelphia, PA

Gerry,

We have misdrops ALL THE TIME - and there is no pattern or trends. They aren't double drops for the most part. I am talking just random pills ending up in a packet with another pill. And we have had TWO PMs (product maintenace) since it was installed. AND, we forced them to send us one of the head Technicians from Seattle to tear it apart to figure out what is wrong with it. It works well for a week and then BAM! Here we go again.

We get nothing but the run around from these people. It is always something we are doing wrong. They have "tweeked" it more times than I can count and it is never fixed. We are now demanding that they send us a whole new machine and they are dragging their feet. The only way we got the guy from Seattle to come out was to threaten to call the FDA and report the problems. We are at that point again.

Name of Facility: Arnot Ogden Medical Center

City, State: Elmira, NY

We don't have problems that often and when it does a good cleaning usually alleviates the problem. I'm sorry to hear that you are having so many problems with your machine and the fact that Talyst hasn't been able to help is a little unassuring. I hope for your sanity that can the issues resolved. I know how annoying it can be to be interrupted from your own daily duties because there is an issue with a piece of equipment.

Name of Facility: Roxborough Memorial Hospital

City, State: Philadelphia, PA

We have had so many problems with the AutoPack, including misdrops, duplicates, random tablets in with others, packaging not tearing correctly, etc. Unfortunately, like you, we got very little support from Talyst in regards to correcting the issue. We have reached a point where we are so frustrated that we have moved everything out of it and started ordering unit dosed products. Those items we can't get UD, we prepack using a device from Lab Rx Interiors. We call her "Lucy." She is very reliable and the service is outstanding. We have unplugged our "paper weight" (AutoPack) and it sits in the corner waiting for one of our techs to take a sledgehammer to it. (I have plenty who would volunteer.)
It's unfortunate that the technology doesn't work as well as we would like it to, but I believe Talyst should support it and find root causes of the problems it has been having. We like the concept of the technology and wish it would work better, but Talyst is not supporting it they way they should be. We have a 650+ bed facility, and we use a variety of Talyst products including the carousels. We are very satisfied with our carousels most of the time an are currently awaiting our upgrade.

Randi
Colorado Springs

Name of Facility: Memorial Hospital Central

City, State: Colorado Springs, CO

By the way, if any one is interested, I have left over cases of paper and ribbon for the AutoPack. Talyst won't accept a return of the supplies. Please contact me if you are interested. Thanks!

Randi Ryder

Name of Facility: Memorial Hospital of Colorado Springs

City, State: Colorado Springs, CO

I have noticed that there are a lot of problems being discussed with the AutoPak. Is there anyone who is having a good experience with the unit? or with the support? We are integrating the whole Talyst system in a few months and would like to know what to expect.

Name of Facility: Eastern Maine Medical Center

City, State: bangor, me

Years as a Buyer: 3

Well, I was just contacted by the people at Talyst and they asked me to take back what I said on the Forum about their poor customer service.

I would like to say, that although I won't rescind my comments from earlier, they did start taking us seriously. We did finally get our problem resoloved after taking our complaints to upper management. We are running smoothly now, and I think it had to do with my boss threatening to call the FDA and report the malfunctions we were having.

We are very happy that it is functioning properly NOW. Anyone else that is having issues with mis-drops or crushed pills - especially Randi - have them slow the machine down. Yes, it increase cart fill by a few minutes. However, not having misdrops and crushed medication is well worth it.

I wish you luck getting your problems taken care of!!!

Name of Facility: Arnot Ogden Medical Center

City, State: Elmira, NY

Years as a Buyer: 8 1/2

We have been telling them about the poor customer service for quite some time. Every time there is a service call you get a follow up "how did we do" phone call. It would appear that they do not listen very well, as we have mentioned from day one the issues we have with their service.

We do not have the volume of issues you all have mentioned, but are calling Talyst on a weekly basis for some aspect of the system we have from them. Sometimes they respond well, but mostly its peicemeal.

Talyst systems are OK for the storage aspect, but the autopharm capabilites are limited greatly. Reporting function is a joke, though we have been told that things are coming (on the 18 month goal list...)

Concerned Buyer:

You mentioned the "Call Backs" that you get after a service call. We have given them SCATHING marks on almost every single call back. Not once has anyone ever followed up with us on those.

However, I put one comment out there on this forum about their poor customer service and they are all over that like bees on honey.

See where their priorities are? They don't want to fix the problem - but Good Lord - don't tell anyone else they suck!! That is bad for business.