Naval Hospital Okinawa recently became the first overseas Navy facility where patients can pick up prescription refills 24/7 from a newly installed locker service. (U.S. Navy)
Naval Hospital Okinawa recently became the first overseas Navy facility where patients can pick up prescription refills 24/7 from a newly installed locker service.
The automated unit, called a ScriptCenter, went into service on May 30 and consists of 160 lockers in the pharmacy’s lobby. The ability to pick up medications at any time has helped improve patients’ wait times, according to Lt. Michael Ahner, of the hospital’s outpatient division office.
“Anytime you’re the first facility to do something and it goes off really well and according to plan and well executed, it sets a blueprint for other sites that would like to do it,” he told Stars and Stripes on a Teams call Wednesday. “I’m very proud that my team did it.”
Naval Hospital Okinawa has 37 pharmacy workers who each fill about 60 prescription refills a day, depending how busy the emergency room gets, Ahner said. And that doesn’t include the six branch clinics that fall under the facility.
“Taking those people out of the waiting queue just helps get other people who are here for antibiotics or cough and cold medicines in and out quicker,” he said.
The lockers are available for prescription refills only. To order a refill, patients call in to the pharmacy’s automatic refill line or go online through the Military Health System Genesis Patient Portal.
Next, they select “ScriptCenter at Naval Hospital” as their pickup location and collect their refills after 2 p.m. the next business day.
The system holds prescriptions securely until patients use their official ID cards to pick them up.
“I’m super excited about them because it offers more access for the outpatient side,” Lt. Julia Pate, the inpatient division pharmacy officer at Naval Hospital Okinawa, said during a Teams call Wednesday. “Usually our patients are limited to pharmacy hours retrieve their refills, but now they have access to them 24/7.”
The lockers cannot refrigerate medications, so the pharmacy has created 24/7 pickup at the hospital’s inpatient window for those types of drugs, Pate said.
The Defense Health Agency funded Okinawa’s ScriptCenter installation for approximately $250,000, which includes the hardware, software license and maintenance, Ahner said.
The first ScriptCenter opened in June 2009 at Los Angeles Air Force Base, according to a press release at the time from the Space and Missile Systems Center.
DHA had deployed 80 units to 69 stateside military hospitals and clinics by the end of 2021, according to the agency’s website. Some sites have adapted the lockers to also hold new prescriptions.
At Naval Hospital Okinawa, the ScriptCenter is limited to refills.
“I think it’s important for people understand that this is for your refills on your medications and not for your new prescriptions, but I do hope that down the line we will grow so that we have some capacity to be able to put new prescriptions in there as well,” Pate said.
