COVID-19 Epidemic Prevention Plan: Reducing the Operational Risk in Pharmacy by the Isolation and Triage Mechanism

Abstract Background: Taiwan medical centers mainly use "Central Pharmacy" to carry out pharmaceutical operations and human resources management. The pharmacy is a 24-hour medication supply center for all units in the Hospital. Therefore, how to make the pharmacy run continuously in the potential impact of COVID-19 pandemic is an important issue in the epidemic prevention of the medical center. The purpose of this study is to design to reduce the incidence of cross or cluster infection in the event of nosocomial infection and to maintain the continuous operation of pharmaceutical service.Methods: The planning of "isolation and triage" of pharmaceutical operations is based on the epidemic level of COVID-19, the closing situation of outpatient service, the number of outpatients receiving medicine service and the number of inpatient beds.Results: After the overall planning, in the case of the low epidemic level (level A1), the emergency pharmacy took advance deployment, and fixed personnel was assigned to work in fixed location in the isolation, while other units started the isolation mode in the case of the moderate epidemic level (level B). Grouping mode was added for the severe epidemic level (level C). Different management measures should be planned according to the different level of risk area evaluated by the infection control center.Conclusions: In this study, the risk reduction management mechanism of "isolation and triage" was effectively used to make proper manpower allocation and work planning for all pharmaceutical service in Hospital.