Wingate University School of Pharmacy Integrates DocuTrack into Academic Program

ANACORTES, Wash. - Sept. 16, 2013 - PRLog -- Carson City, Nevada – September, 2013 – The Wingate University School of Pharmacy, located in North Carolina, integrated DocuTrack into their Pharmacy academic program starting this Fall semester. Interfaced with the FrameworkLTC Pharmacy System, students will receive training in how to operate DocuTrack as an electronic platform for processing incoming documentation.

“DocuTrack is part of a lot of pharmacy IT installations,” says Dr. Nicholas Ferencz, Director of Pharmacy Practice Laboratory at Wingate. “The point here is to mimic what a student would see in the real work of pharmacy practice. We looked at DocuTrack and FrameworkLTC and they just go together. And most of the pharmacies that use Framework use DocuTrack, too. Going the route of using an actual pharmacy system and document management system lets students see in here what they’ll see out in their practical experience, so they’ll be more comfortable with it. This kind of approach will also allow us to meet the emerging accreditation requirement for pharmacy schools. We’re actually building what the accreditation committee would like to see done with other pharmacy schools throughout the country. So it’s always fun to be the first to do something because you set the standard.”

Backing from the local pharmacy community has been strong since the school’s inception ten years ago. “There were a lot of pharmacists in this area who strongly supported the idea of bringing a pharmacy school here,” says Ferencz. “The community support was tremendous, and support from the pharmacists in this area has never dwindled. We have tremendous support – financial support, moral support, donations of equipment, supplies.”

Stanley Labs joined the ranks of contributors when they donated their old servers to Wingate in 2012.  “We were upgrading our servers and the suggestion was made to donate our old servers to the school,” says Susan Swepton, Pharmacy Director of Stanley Labs. A DocuTrack customer since 2006, Stanley Labs contacted Integra about their plans to donate their servers.

“When we saw what they were doing at Wingate, we knew we wanted to participate,” says Mileen Loeffler, Client Services Director at Integra. Under Loeffler’s guidance, Integra proceeded to donate a DocuTrack license, numerous workstations for student use, and the time for installation, workflow building, and support.

Because DocuTrack has just recently been integrated into the coursework, students will spend the first few semesters being familiarized with DocuTrack and learning how to process documents.  “We’ve just started using DocuTrack this fall, but the goal is to get the students to build a real-life scenario,” says Ferencz. “Obviously, if a student sees here what they’ll see out in their practical experience, they’ll be more comfortable with it.”

In June of 2013, Loeffler was joined by Integra Consultant Ellen Williams on a visit to Wingate University to better understand the pharmacy program’s needs and goals. Loeffler and Williams then customized a suitable workflow that students are currently using.

“We are excited about this partnership,” says Loeffler. “Their facilities are state-of-the-art and their program very impressive. The staff is enthusiastic, knowledgeable, and well-informed of current pharmacy trends, so we’re excited to see in what innovative ways they use DocuTrack for in the future.”

Ferencz has several plans for the future of DocuTrack and the pharmacy program: “We would like to integrate the Pharmacy students with the Nursing, Physical Therapy, and Physician’s Assistant students, too. As more and more products come on board, the program will begin to look like a community that you would actually see in a pharmacy or nursing home. So besides the possiblilty of using the software between disciplines in the university setting, we probably would have a very good shot at creating a continuity between individual courses here in the pharmacy school, too. Basically to create an environment that mimics the kind of interaction they will have in the work-a-day world. Using DocuTrack in conjuncture with Framework will allow us to simulate those kinds of relationships.”

For more information about Wingate University School of Pharmacy, visit http://pharmacy.wingate.edu/.