AuBurn LTC | 2025 Q4 Newsletter

Welcome!

Happy respiratory season when hand hygiene is key! Please reach out to our pharmacy team if there are subjects or topics that you would like to see discussed in future issues of this newsletter!

Vaccine Clinics

For those who have vaccine clinics scheduled with us, to ensure maximal efficiency for clinic success please have screening forms filled out completely prior to clinic date. For those that choose to go room to room for vaccine administration it would be preferred to have a staff member round with us to help point out and confirm resident names.

ACIP recommendation for the updated 2025-2026 COVID vaccine is to administer with shared clinical decision for those that are 65 years and older and those 6 months-64 years old with one of the qualifying underlying conditions.

Why so many COVID-19 vaccines?

COVID-19 vaccines differ in how they create an immune response in comparison to Hep B, MMR, etc. Most vaccines elicit a response of long-lived plasma cells that can rapidly produce disease fighting antibodies (for example Tdap provides protection for 10 years because of this mechanism). COVID-19 vaccine differs, it tells your body to produce an antibody that is specific to fighting the COVID-19 Virus, it does not generate the long-lived plasma cells therefore the immunity from this type of vaccine starts to wane after 3 months.

General Reminders

• If your facility EMAR is integrated with the pharmacy, new and/or updated narcotic orders do not transmit to us. ONLY refill request and d/c orders. So, if you get a new narcotic order, please either fax or call into the pharmacy.
• For patients whose primary pharmacy is not AuBurn Pharmacy, if a medication is needed, please communicate with us via a phone call that it needs to be sent. Otherwise, we assume the medication will be filled by their primary pharmacy. This seems to be an issue in particular with patients utilizing the VA.
• Reminder to follow the 5 rights (right person, right drug, right dose, right time, right route) to ensure those circumstances of when orders in the EMAR do not match exactly what was dispensed are clarified and updated accordingly.
  • Example: EMAR order is for Remeron 7.5 mg daily, what is dispensed: Remeron 15 mg take ½ tab daily. Best practice would be to update the EMAR to reflect what was dispensed to reduce risk of med error.

LTC/SNF Survey Trends

• Stop dates on PRN psychotropic. Per CMS regulations, there are NO exceptions (exempt diagnosis, pay status, hospice) to this regulation
  • o Antipsychotics have a limited duration of 14 days and must be reevaluated by the provider every 14 days
• Ensure med carts are locked when unattended
• Please notify pharmacy to do a crush med review on residents before crushing medications
• FYI we are seeing an increase of surveyors walk in on weekends to start annual surveys