$36M drug production facility set to go ahead KEITH GEREIN

The province has approved construction of a $36-million pharmaceutical hub in Edmonton that will take over responsibility for preparing medications required by the region’s hospitals and health centres.

Alberta Infrastructure hopes to see work begin on the Provincial Pharmacy Central Drug Production and Distribution Centre as early as mid-June and has already issued a request for bids — even though a site for the project has yet to be found.

The new facility will be the biggest piece of a $66-million, threephase project to revamp Alberta Health Services’ drug production network across the province.

Later phases will feature a $22-million expansion of Calgary ’s production facility, along with $8.5 million in upgrades to five hub sites in Fort McMurray, Grande Prairie, Red Deer, Medicine Hat and Lethbridge.

Funding for the work was included in the NDP government’s most recent five-year capital plan.

Karen Horon, senior operating officer of pharmacy services for AHS, said the project is touted to reduce medication mishaps, produce cost-savings and allow the health authority to meet new industry standards for preparing drugs.

“The whole project is really going to further enhance patient safety,” she said Tuesday. “To have a facility that meets those standards and standardize the way we do that work is really, really key and we are pretty excited about that.”

Horon said medications used in acute-care settings often require some manipulation before they are given to patients.

For injectable or intravenous drugs, liquids frequently have be diluted or mixed with other medications. Pills purchased in bulk have to be repackaged in smaller quantities and clearly labelled for specific patients.

Unlike Calgary, Edmonton does not currently have a centralized drug production site. Instead, the work is carried out within pharmacies at individual hospitals that aren’t necessarily equipped the same way, Horon said.

Such a fragmented system has a number of drawbacks, including the potential for inconsistencies in how drugs are prepared and labelled, which, in turn, increases the chances of medication errors that can harm patients.

Many patients with adverse drug episodes are forced to return to hospital or stay longer, which raises costs for the health system.

As well, the separate sites do not meet new industry “clean room” regulations, which are highly specific about what the walls and ceilings should be made of, room temperatures and other factors needed to create sterile conditions, Horon said.

By building a new central facility to consolidate all the work, AHS can avoid renovations to its hospital pharmacies, she said.

“It’s not unsafe the way we are doing it now, but this is an opportunity to enhance the standardization.”

An analysis prepared by Alberta Infrastructure last year estimated the project would save $3.7 million annually in reduced medical errors, plus another $1 million to $3 million in reduced renovation costs.

AHS hopes to equip the new centre with a high level of automation, which could include robotic mixing systems and robotic inventory systems capable of filling patient orders.

“The idea is to get the medication in the most ready-to-use format so that the nurse can administer it safely to the patient,” Horon said.

The plan calls for the Edmonton facility to be built on governmentowned land, and located in a central or accessible location near major roads.

Horon said the 3,800-squaremetre centre will eventually serve not just the Edmonton region, but also northern Alberta and possibly some of the central zone.

Once a location is selected, the project is expected to take about four years to complete.

After that, the plan is to proceed with a 1,040-square-metre expansion of Calgary’s drug production centre.

Asked whether it’s usual practice to issue a request for bids before a construction site is selected, Alberta Infrastructure replied with an emailed statement that failed to answer the question.

It’s unclear what prompted the province to approve the project this year. The project was classified as one of AHS’s most urgent infrastructure needs in 2016, but was dropped from the priority list last year.