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Method and apparatus for inter-pharmacy workload balancing

  • US 7,860,730 B1
  • Filed: 06/07/2010
  • Issued: 12/28/2010
  • Est. Priority Date: 10/18/2005
  • Status: Active Grant
First Claim
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1. A method of managing drug prescription orders within a network of pharmacy resources comprising:

  • receiving, into electronic queues corresponding to computers of a plurality of pharmacy resources in the network of pharmacy resources, prescription work orders for execution, wherein;

    the computers are communicatively coupled,each of the plurality of pharmacy resources is at a different location and includes at least one employee, andthe prescription work orders each include a physical preparation portion and an information processing portion;

    calculating a workload for each pharmacy resource, the workload based on an employee type of a corresponding at least one employee, wherein the employee type is selected from a group of employee types including at least a pharmacist and a non-pharmacist;

    determining a current workload distribution of the plurality of pharmacy resources based on the calculated workload of each pharmacy resource;

    designating a particular pharmacy resource as one of a sender or a receiver pharmacy resource based on the calculated workload of the particular pharmacy resource and the current workload distribution of the plurality of pharmacy resources; and

    automatically routing, based on the current workload distribution, a first portion of the information processing portion of a particular prescription work order from a sender electronic queue corresponding to a sender computer corresponding to a designated sender pharmacy resource to at least one first receiver electronic queue corresponding to at least one first receiver computer corresponding to at least one first designated receiver pharmacy resource.

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