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H H S Department of Health and Human Services
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Health Resources and Services Administration
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Telepharmacy Rescues Drug Stores

Telepharmacy Rescues Drug Stores, Improves Health Care and Creates Jobs in North Dakota Towns

What does a telepharmacy look like? No different from your average drug store. Often set up in corner stores that went out of business, they sell over-the-counter medications and consumer goods typically found in regular pharmacies.

But their pharmacists may be miles away, connected to the sites by computer conferencing technology, and the efficiencies they achieve can make it possible for small towns to keep their drug stores open – and their residents supplied with the medications they need.

In North Dakota, where a HRSA grant supports telepharmacies at 48 remote sites, the high-tech approach has helped retail pharmacies stay afloat, brought pharmacy services to more than 40,000 small town residents, and created more than 60 jobs.

That's something that seemed impossible just ten years ago, when dozens of North Dakota’s community pharmacies closed because replacements for retiring pharmacists could not be found.

The grant project started to reverse the trend in 2002, its first year, when North Dakota’s first ten telepharmacies set up shop.

Today, registered pharmacy technicians at the 72 sites in drug stores and small rural hospitals use audio-video software and high-resolution digital cameras to share information with pharmacists at 24 central "hubs" around the state. Using the cameras, the technicians show pharmacists the physician-signed prescription, the stock bottle where the pills are stored, and the computer-generated label on the container the patient will take home.

"Pharmacists watch and talk to the technicians as they fill prescriptions," said Dr. Charles Peterson, dean of North Dakota State University’s College of Pharmacy and the project’s director. "They can see the script label clearly, even zoom in and ID-code the tablet, or watch the 'splash-and pour' of the technician, who stays online – all in real time."

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Did You Know?
  • It costs about $18,000 to set up a central or remote telepharmacy site. That includes equipment, installation and a-year of Internet service.
  • Hospital sites cost an additional $5,000, because of the need for a customized, mobile cart that can be used anywhere in the hospital where there is secure, wireless connectivity.
  • The North Dakota Telepharmacy Project has received a total of $3.3 million in HRSA grante funds from fiscal years 2002-05 and 2008.
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