Academic and Student Affairs Committee discuss reasons of Foust Pharmacy closure
The Academic and Student Affairs Committee met today to discuss the closing of Foust Pharmacy, HIPAA compliance issues and review a report of charter school accountability.
Fred Creighton, assistant dean of medical services in the College of Medicine, spoke on behalf of University Medical Services about the pharmacy’s closure. He said closing the pharmacy was a financial benefit to the college.
The closure was announced Jan. 15. Originally set to close March 1, the pharmacy will now close Thursday, Feb. 25 due to “staffing issues.”
“(The pharmacy) was operating at a substantial loss. This was considered very carefully,” he said. “Realizing (the facility) had become historic, substantial part of Health Services we did an assessment of what it would mean to close the pharmacy.”
Creighton said he and others within Health Services looked at other opportunities available to students locally. Past budgets were also reviewed when making the decision.
“Acquisition costs for pharmacies over the last three academic years, when we looked at it, had increased 70 percent,” Creighton said. “Revenue coming into the pharmacy for charges against those prescriptions was flat.”
In the past year, the pharmacy has filled 20,251 prescriptions and served as many as 4,232 patients.
It cost the college more to keep the pharmacy working than what they made back in prescriptions, he said, which resulted in “about a $100,000 loss” a year. Along with financial losses, Creighton said staffing was also an issue, only having one on-staff pharmacist in the pharmacy.
“Dean (George) Kikano made the decision that we would close the operation, outsource it,” he said. “In doing so it really allowed us to also implement electronic prescribing which is really the state (standard) in the industry right now.”
Instead of writing paper prescriptions for students and staff who visit University Health Services, doctors now uses software. This allows doctors to write prescriptions electronically and send them to wherever a patient wants to pick up their medication. The record of a prescription being filled will be electronically placed in the patient’s medical file, which helps to eliminate time updating the student or staff’s medical records with the medication they’re taking.
Members of the Board of Trustees commended Creighton, Kikano and others at University Health Services for finding out what a deficit the pharmacy accrued for the college.
“There are times when it’s absolutely appropriate to provide student services directly but there comes a time when outsourcing is appropriate as well,” said Board of Trustees member Richard Studley.
Two additional presentations were given at the meeting including a rundown of HIPAA compliance and issues given by Chief Information and Security Officer Mark Herron and a report of charter schools accountability.
Provost Michael Gealt also introduced the name change for the College of Science and Technology to the College of Science and Engineering. The action item was approved and the board will vote on the approval of the name change at tomorrow morning’s meeting.
“We’ve got a relatively new engineering program, about 15 years old, and some people don’t even realize we have an engineering program here because we don’t have what most universities have which is a college that has engineering in the title,” Gealt said.
The next Board of Trustees meeting will take place at 8:30 a.m. tomorrow in the President’s Conference Room in the Bovee University Center.
