New Calumet City Pharmacy site to improve and expand services:
The University of Chicago Medicine opened an important facility earlier this week that will expand four key Pharmacy areas and advance our mission to increase access to exceptional care for our patients.
Retail pharmacy outgrew its present location in the DCAM as demand for medications significantly increased over the years. The operations at this new location will send prescriptions from specialty, retail, and mail-order services directly to patients’ homes, and courier refills to Hyde Park to support the storefront and ScriptCenter operations in DCAM.
The new facility, located within an existing UChicago Medicine Ingalls Memorial building in Calumet City, includes 30,000 square feet of space to meet the needs of our four key service areas. Through the use of robotics and conveyance systems that interact with Epic, the new space will enable the Pharmacy team to increase the number of outpatient prescriptions filled from 1,200 to 4,000 per day.
The new facility also boosts UChicago Medicine’s infusion capabilities for home infusion services with the addition of a large clean room for compounding and nine new infusion rooms for easier patient access. Each room offers privacy with a TV and space for a guest. Patients who qualify for home infusion can now stay within UChicago Medicine to receive their care either in their home or at this clinic. Previously, patients who qualified for home infusion had to be referred outside of UChicago Medicine. The Calumet City center complements infusion capabilities offered in Hyde Park, Orland Park, River East and Tinley Park.
A streamlined and sophisticated packing and shipping model supports the large volume of product sent directly to the patient’s home. The well-planned design allows a continuous flow of goods to be brought into the facility, processed in the robotics filling space or classified clean room, and delivered to the patient where they want it – at home, in a clinical setting, or a retail location.
Plans for the future include the potential to expand clinical services in the ambulatory setting and offer specialty and home infusion services to Northwest Indiana.