What are all of you doing with the discontinuation of commercially available Miralax UD Packets? We have been pre-packing in-house using the Go-Lytely jugs. But, this takes a ton of time and we are really feeling the FTE crunch. Any ideas?
I am doing the same thing.
Recently, my director forwarded me an email from another director saying Shering-Plough was coming out with an institutional packet (17gm) sometime in April. It can't be soon enough, as far as I'm concerned! Has anyone else heard that??
We started using the Miralax 7 day powder (119gm)small bulk bottles. They are fairly cheap, and are just about the right size for the length of hospital stay. And they save a lot of labor for packaging.
Name of Facility: Heartland Regional Medical Center
I just got an email from NECC (Ameridose) that they have Miralax 17gm in stock. Minimum order is 50 @$3.50 each. Seems kinda pricey to me. Maybe I'll wait to see if Schering really does come out with something in the near future.
We currently order in the 238gm bottle and prepackage it ourselves. It is very easy, one scoup, one dose. We just dump it into prescription vials and put a label on it and we're ready to go. It only cost us about 50 cents per dose. We have had a couple companies call us about unit dosing it for us but wanted over $3.00 per dose, way out of line. It is quick and easy to just do it ourselves. We have the label stored in our computer and we just print it out (bar coded and all)
We measured it out once on the scale and it was right on, so after that we just used the scoup that came in the bottle. Works great and we don't have to stop and weigh the powder each time.
No we do not load these 7 day powder (119gm)small bulk bottles in the pyxis. Each nurse keeps meds safely locked up in compartments of the Wallaroo units. Each compartment is alloted to the patient in the room.
I stocked up on the UD packets as soon as I heard they were going away... we've still got a lot. Once that's out, we'll just dispense one of the large bottles to the patient and the nurse will keep it in the medroom. Same as we do for things like Byetta and other pen-dispensing medications that we can't unit dose.
We are also unit dosing our own packets. The original question Above)came from Laura, she says that they are using the Go-lytely powder in the bottles, I thought that they had some electrolytes in it along with the PEG. That could be dangerous to the patient if they didn't need the electrolytes so be careful.
I contacted our Shering rep and he has confirmed that they will in fact be bringing out a UD packets of Miralax sometime mid April. I think this is excellent news.
Name of Facility: St. Francis Health Center
City, State: Acute
Years as a Buyer: 5 in health care & 20+ in retail hard goods