This invention relates to cabinets for storing and dispensing prescription medications, non-prescription pharmaceuticals, medical supplies and other similar items for patient care in a hospital, clinic, nursing home, or similar health care facility. The invention is more specifically directed to a medical dispensing cabinet, with one or more pull-out drawers in which medical items are stored in individual compartments, which compartments may have locking lids or covers. The invention is more particularly concerned with a cabinet with limited access and with accountability of access and dispensing, and which may assist in the prevention of fraudulent access and reduction of medical errors. The cabinet drawer features trays that can slide out from beneath locked lids to facilitate restocking.
In any hospital or clinic, or in wards or floors of the hospital or health center, controlled access cabinets are used for storage of pharmaceuticals and of other limited-access medical supplies. The medications prescribed for patients need to be conveniently accessible for the authorized nurse staff, but also need to be protected from unauthorized access of prescription medications, controlled substances, and high-value medical supplies. Dispensing cabinets typically have a stack of pull-out drawers that each have a number of compartments. Currently, practical cabinets of this type simply have drawers divided into compartments with no control of access once the drawer has been opened. In some of these there is a locking or latching mechanism associated with the individual drawers.
The compartments may be filled or replenished by pharmacy staff, and later accessed by nursing staff to administer drugs or other items to patients.
The cabinet may be of a suitable size for containing a variety of medical supplies and medications in amounts proper for the day to day needs of the medical staff and patients. For example, tall medical supply cabinets are commonly used in many health care facilities, with locking doors for limited access to some items, and locking drawers, each with several rows of divided compartments, for storage of prescription medications, non-prescription medications and supplies, hypodermic needles and syringes, and other materials that may be needed.
It is desirable to maintain a record of which supplies and which medications are stored, and in what quantities, in which locking or non-locking compartments of one or more of the drawers, and to unlock the one specific compartment lid for a given medication or supply item when it is needed to access the same to administer to a given patient.
In some cases, only dividers are present in the drawers and it is then not possible to limit access for specific compartments within the drawer.
These locking cabinets often incorporate USB connections (for access to a computer) and may incorporate control circuitry with software for controlling unlocking functions and inventory functions. These may be capable of IP addressable configurations, for access over a hospital network, to a personal computer, tablet, or hand-held device.
In the case of a multiple-compartment pull-out drawer, either in a floor-standing cabinet, a wall-mounted cabinet, or a portable cart, there may be respective tops or lids, each covering a divided section or compartment in the drawer. LED lights may be used to indicate whether a given compartment is unlocked and open. Sensors in each compartment may provide open-closed status for the compartments, and this permits the cabinet to capture an audit trail of which compartment has been opened, and by whom. In the past, these compartments were non-locking, but it was possible to sense and track which compartment had been accessed. Until the present, drawers divided into individual compartments with locking lids have employed rather complex locking systems, with individual latches, releases and actuators for each compartment lid.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a medical dispensing arrangement that avoids the drawbacks of the prior art.
It is another object to provide a medications cabinet with one or more pull-out drawers, divided into individual compartments, and each with a locking lid or cover, to limit authorized access to a specific medication only at one given time, to the pharmacy technician or to the nurse accessing the cabinet.
It is still another object to provide a cabinet that limits access to only one compartment of the drawer at a time, and which denies access to any other compartments at the time the drawer has been opened. This functionality is preferable, to limit access to only a single medication, and in doing so help reduce patient medication errors. It is also preferable for drawers containing narcotic medications to limit access to only the one medication prescribed.
It is a more specific object to provide a locking medication cabinet in which the locking mechanism of the drawer's compartments is a straightforward, electro-mechanical design, of a limited number of parts, and which overcomes the defects of the drawbacks of the prior art.
A further object is to provide the drawer with a lockable drop-down front drawer panel, to permit individual bins or rows of bins to be removed and replaced by sliding them under the locked lids.
Other objects include database control over the locations of the medications; fast retrieval of prescriptions; rapid and accurate fill of prescriptions; and database-provided restocking of medications.
In accordance with an aspect of the present invention, a medication dispensing system involves a controlled access pharmaceutical storage case that comprises a frame and at least one pull out drawer slidably supported in the frame of the cabinet. The drawer includes a plurality of storage compartments arranged in at least one pair of parallel rows in the direction from back to front of the drawer. An elongated channel portion extends in the back to front direction between the rows of each pair of rows of compartments. Each of the storage compartments has a lid that is normally locked down but is selectively releasable to permit the lid to open for access to the compartment. The lid may be made of a clear, durable plastic so that the contents of the compartment are visible when the drawer is pulled out. The lid may instead be made of an opaque material (plastic or metal), to prevent the person accessing the cabinet from seeing what is stored in other locked compartments within the open drawer. Each lid has a hinge pin at its rear portion. This permits the lid to pivot from a lowered closed position to an raised open position. A lock pin extends from one edge of the lid into said channel portion.
A slide bar, or equivalent device, disposed in the channel portion is adapted for motion, for at least a limited distance along the channel portion. The slide bar has slots along its side edges and these slots align with the respective lock pins of the compartment lids when the slide bar is moved to different positions along its associated channel. The respective compartment lid, for which the lock pin aligns with its associated slot, may be lifted open, but the remaining lids in that pair of rows are blocked from opening.
A controlled gearmotor device moves the slide bar to selected positions to align a given slot of the slide bar with the lock pin of a selected one of the compartments. This permits the associated lid to be lifted open but the other compartments in that pair of rows remain locked and are blocked from opening.
The present invention individually locks each of the divided compartments within each drawer, allowing access to only one divided section of the drawer at a time. This allows only one medication to be available at one time to the pharmacy technician or nurse accessing the cabinet. The user will not have access to the entire contents of a drawer when opened. This reduces the opportunity for the administration of a different, wrong medication for a given patient.
Favorably, the gearmotor is controlled to move the slide bar only when the drawer is closed, and is inhibited from moving the slide bar when the drawer has been pulled open, as a means to prevent access to more than one compartment at any one time.
The front panel of the drawer is hinged so that it can swing down and out of the way, to permit the trays or rows of bins to slide out the front from beneath the locked lids. The front drawer panel is locked, e.g. with a key lock. The pharmacy staff possess the key and can open the front drawer panel to remove entire rows of bins when the contents are depleted or have become stale, and can replace the same with a pre-filled tray or row of bins.
The above and many other objects, features, and advantages of this invention will become apparent from the ensuing description of a selected preferred embodiment, which is to be considered in connection with the accompanying Drawing.
With reference to the Drawing, and initially to
Turning to
The locking bar or slide bar arrangement can be explained in respect to
An example of the slide bar or lock bar 38 employed in this embodiment is shown in
The slide bar 38 in this embodiment has its slots 44 positioned so that as the bar 38 is moved in 3/16 inch increments, the different slots 44 will align with their respective lock pins 42, one lock pin at a time. There are two such slide bars 38 each associated with one of the two pairs of rows of compartments. Each of the slide bars is calibrated to have eleven (11) positions, that is, one position for each of the ten compartments in the two rows, and one position at which all the compartments are locked.
As shown in
Each gear motor 50 is mounted on a frame or bracket 52 that is fastened onto the drawer distal wall 34. A motor drive gear 54 meshes with a slave pinion 56 that is journalled on the frame, and this pinion 56 meshes with the gear rack 46 of the slide bar at a position above the frame or bracket 52 of the gear motor. The gear motor is indexed to move in increments so as to align the bar with the one of the slots 44 positioned to align with the lock pin 42 for the lid of a desired bin or compartment 28. The logic and control circuitry can be driven by an associated computer or similar device that has a memory containing the identity of contents of each of the bins or compartments in the drawer so that the slide lock bar 38 will be moved to the appropriate location to access the medications for a particular patient, based on the prescription data stored to that patient. There are additional holes on the wall of the frame or bracket, for mounting additional gearing, encoder or potentiometer, e.g., for positioning or locating purposes, as will be discussed. Not shown in
The operation of the drawer 18 can be explained in reference to
Another method of identifying the compartments would be employ numbered decals (e.g. numbered “1” to “20” where there are four rows of five compartments) placed on the respective lids 30, which would correspond to the identity of the compartment stored in software, so that a display would provide the number (“1” to “20”) of the lid 30 that the user is directed to open.
An alternative unlock mechanism is shown somewhat schematically in
In the embodiments described here, the control circuitry is suitably programmed so that the locking bar or slide bar 38 is moved first before the drawer 18 can be unlocked and pulled open. That is, the slide bars only move when the drawer is shut and closed, so that only a single compartment can be accessed. In order to access a different compartment in the same drawer, for security the associated software requires that the drawer 18 be first shut and relocked by the user before another compartment in the same drawer can be accessed.
An advantage to the construction according to the embodiments of this invention is that only two gear motors 50 are required for the four rows of compartments, or in this embodiment, two (2) motors are sufficient to control the independent locking of twenty (20) bins or compartments, to ensure both security and authorized access. That is, each gear motor drive is associated with one slide bar 38, which provides access to each of the two associated rows of the pair of rows. This provides a durable, reliable lock and unlock mechanism for controlling access to the medications, and can be achieved at low to moderate cost.
While the embodiment herein-described employ one slide bar between each pair of rows, it is possible to employ a slide bar associated with a single row of compartments, or in some cases a slide bar associated with more than two rows of compartments.
Here, the control circuitry may include a computer controller (not specifically shown here), e.g., a standard lap top unit or touch screen tablet unit that may be incorporated into the cabinet 12 of supported on the cabinet, and may have a provision for entering prescription data and patient information. The computer unit may also require identity of the user, i.e., nurse or other caregiver, to create an audit trail of access to the various compartments. This may be done using ID code input, bar code scanning of ID's, proximity cards with RFID identification and password protection, and using biometric methods. The computer keeps track of the physical location of each filled prescription, i.e., each medication, within the cabinet. This can also be carried out, as an option, in an on-board processor or controller board.
As shown in
As shown in
Contact lens packages with lenses of various prescription strengths can also be stored and dispensed from an arrangement of this type. Other possible configurations are also possible, i.e., higher or wider than the embodiments described here. Also, the drawers may be divided into compartments with the rows arranged left to right instead of back to front. The front panel 32 of the drawer may be configured to swing open to one side, rather than to drop down.
The arrangements and embodiments of this invention have the attribute of secure storage of multiple prescription medications, and achieve this in a small footprint, requiring little additional floor space. This arrangement has database control over the exact locations of the prescription medications, and achieves both quick storage and fast retrieval of the prescriptions. Bar coding for double-checking the prescriptions before dispensing can be carried out automatically or semi-automatically. Similarly, methods employing RFID identification of individual medications can also be used for security and prevention of mediation dispensing errors.
While the invention has been described hereinabove with reference to selected preferred embodiments, it should be recognized that the invention is not limited to those precise embodiments. In particular, in some preferred embodiments there can be a lockable front door anterior to the stack of lockable drawers, to provide an additional layer of protection for controlled substances located within the locked bins or compartments of the locked drawer. Rather, many modification and variations would present themselves to persons skilled in the art without departing from the scope and spirit of this invention, as defined in the appended claims.
This is a continuation-in-part of my co-pending application Ser. No. 13/291,462, filed Nov. 8, 2011.
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Number | Date | Country | |
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20140225491 A1 | Aug 2014 | US |
Number | Date | Country | |
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Parent | 13291462 | Nov 2011 | US |
Child | 13765146 | US |