Inpatient Pharmacy Services

While you are hospitalized or in the emergency department at Sutter Tracy Community Hospital, our highly trained and licensed pharmacists and pharmacy technicians work together with you, your physicians and nurses to make sure the medications you receive are appropriate, safe and effective. We review all medication orders and screen for allergies and potential health complications. We also participate in emergency code situations and provide physician consultations on a multitude of medication protocols.

Transitions of Care

From the beginning of your stay, we are an important member of your health team. We assist your doctor in developing a medication treatment plan to follow when you leave the hospital. Our Transitional Care Pharmacy program compares your discharge medications with other medication you take at home to reduce medication error, potential side effects, adverse effects and confusion. We also verify your insurance coverage and contact outpatient specialty pharmacies to make sure you’ll have no problem picking up your discharge medications. If you are moving to a skilled nursing facility, we can also change your IV antibiotics or adjust dosing intervals, if needed.

If your condition puts you at risk of repeat hospitalization, you will receive discharge counseling from our Transitional Care pharmacist, which includes educating you about your disease and the medications your doctor has prescribed and providing information about when you should contact your doctor or go to the emergency department. You’ll receive a follow-up phone call from our pharmacist 48 hours after discharge.

Ambulatory Care Pharmacy Services

Managing your medications when you have a chronic disease can be overwhelming. Our pharmacist-run Disease State Management Clinic provides chronic disease management services to patients with any chronic disease, including congestive heart failure (CHF), diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia and anticoagulation. When you are discharged from the hospital, your primary physician will refer you to the Disease State Management Clinic for follow up for the next several years. Our goal is to help you maintain optimum health and keep you out of the hospital.

We practice under Sutter Tracy Community Hospital Pharmacy & Therapeutics Committee-approved protocols in conjunction with community physicians. We are open Monday through Friday from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm.

To get more information about the Disease Statement Management Clinic or refer a patient, please contact us at (209) 222-0771 or STCH-DMC@sutterhealth.org.

Advanced Technology Maximizes Safety

As pharmacists, our goal is to increase patient safety and improve patient care.  We’ve installed automated dispensing machines in the hospital with advanced computerized bar-coding software and databases to track all medication orders. We use a leading edge bedside medication delivery system to make sure the right dose of the right medicine is given to the right patient at the right time. Additionally, Sutter Tracy was the first hospital in the Valley to employ radio-frequency identification (RFID) to accurately determine the full contents of crash cart kits and other pharmacy stocked kits at the hospital.

We were also the first pharmacy in the Valley to employ a web-based medication tracking solution that uses remote digital photographic imaging technology to improve our efficiency, safety and regulatory compliance. This application allows our pharmacists to document, check and track sterile intravenous agents as they progress through our sterile compounding process. This ensures a consistent, high quality product prepared in a timely manner. It also gives us an audit trail with feedback that helps our technicians minimize or eliminate unnecessary movements during the sterile compounding process.