How can a pharmacy provide the same level of care to its beneficiaries without compromising patients’ health? Can a pharmacy provide superb care while protecting its most important assets; the pharmacy staff?

For Naval Health Clinic Cherry Point, the answer is yes and yes, and the solution came down to creating a drive-thru pharmacy.

“Our waiting room space is extremely limited,” said Director of Clinical Support Services Lt. Cmdr. Jone L. Tillman. “We share our waiting room with laboratory patients so we quickly become overcrowded with patients, making social distancing impossible.”

What was once a Naval Hospital years ago, but now serves as a Military Treatment Facility clinic, luckily had space available in the old emergency room bay.

“It was an easy transition to funnel traffic through our old ambulance bay,” said Joseph Farland, NHCCP Emergency Manager. “We’ve been using that area as an exit for ambulatory patients after surgery, so with the addition of a few signs and a few traffic cones, we had our drive thru ready to go.”

According to NHCCP Commanding Officer Capt. Doug Stephens, “I can’t be more impressed with the staff we have at NHCCP. The past several months have been extremely challenging; juggling supplies, staff and hours. But knowing we have such capable officers and staff like Lt. Cmdr. Tillman and her pharmacy department, people who can literally create something from nothing, goes a long way in taking care of our patients and staff.”

According to Tillman, the changes took patients a while to get used to the new system.

“We shut down the Marine Corps Exchange Refill site during the early days of the pandemic as we didn’t know which facilities would remain open,” Tillman said. “Additionally, since the pharmacy staff was reduced to maintain social distancing to include port and starboard shifts, we needed to reassign Sailors from other clinics which were not seeing as many patients to assist with the new workload of shuffling prescriptions to the new pick up area as well as assisting patients when they arrived for their medications.”

Reactions to the drive thru pharmacy were mostly positive with some patients commenting: “Excellent staff! During this difficult time, they do an outstanding job in explaining and having patience! A big thank you for all they do! During this time when everyone is dealing with the Coronavirus pandemic, I wanted to take a moment to thank the staff of the pharmacy for their professionalism and willingness to do everything they can to make the patient’s experience the best possible encounter.”

Of course not everything works perfectly all the time.

“There were times when we had longer than usual waits for medications,” Tillman said. “We did have to increase wait times on occasions to two hours or less. But that was just part of the pain of doing business during a pandemic.”

As bases begin easing restrictions and allow more freedom of movement around facilities, NHCCP’s pharmacy will continue to look for new ways to innovate and do business, providing the best patient care possible. This includes closing the now popular drive thru facility July 10 and reopening the MCX refill on July 13.

“We know some people really like the drive thru system,” Tillman said. “But we’re moving forward with our services. However, knowing that we can create new systems to overcome any challenge is very satisfying. Our pharmacy staff and Sailors definitely rose to the occasion to make the best of a difficult situation.

Get more information about the Navy from US Navy facebook or twitter.

For more news from Naval Health Clinic Cherry Point , visit www.navy.mil/.