{"id":16890,"date":"2025-08-12T16:28:43","date_gmt":"2025-08-12T16:28:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/an-opioid-safety-measure-one-pill-at-a-time\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T04:02:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:02:07","slug":"an-opioid-safety-measure-one-pill-at-a-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/an-opioid-safety-measure-one-pill-at-a-time\/","title":{"rendered":"An opioid safety measure, one pill at a time"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Parking
Parking lot outside of Southwest Health System retail pharmacy. (Benjamin Rubin\/The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

The term is \u201cdrug diversion,\u201d and it\u2019s a risk present for any pharmacy. There\u2019s always the chance that when counting out, say, oxycodone capsules prescribed to manage pain after a surgery, some of those pills will disappear.<\/p>\n

Precautions taken to reduce diversion incidents fit into a larger web of substance use management underway in Southwest Colorado.<\/p>\n

On Aug. 6, the Montezuma County Board of County Commissioners voted unanimously to approve a letter of support to Southwest Health System\u2019s retail pharmacy as the health care provider seeks grant money to buy an automated pill counter.<\/p>\n

If purchased, the pill counter would assist in ensuring patients receive properly counted prescriptions and keep controlled substances flowing where they\u2019re meant to, Kelsey Gilbert, pharmacy director at SHS, told commissioners during an Aug. 5 meeting.<\/p>\n

Gilbert described the machine as helping the pharmacy remain \u201cvery full circle,\u201d assisting with \u201ckeeping opioids to the right people who need them for medical reasons and then out of the hands of other people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Funds to buy the pill counter are being requested from SWORD, the regional opioid abatement council for Southwest Colorado. SWORD oversees a slice from a larger total of millions in opioid settlement money awarded to the state<\/a>. In mid-July, the council announced about $450,000 available through grant money<\/a> that aims to lessen the blows of harms caused by substance use.<\/p>\n

The machine that the SHS pharmacy aims to buy is highly advanced, capable of capturing photos of a pill tray five times per second, according to the manufacturer\u2019s description<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Total costs for the Eyecon 9430 automated pill counter would be about $18,000, Jaycee Hart, SHS marketing specialist, told The Journal<\/em> in an email.<\/p>\n

Those costs include aligning the machine with the pharmacy\u2019s software and educating staff, she said.<\/p>\n

Hart said no drug diversion incidents have been reported at the pharmacy since its opening in 2018.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, that being said, we don\u2019t want to put our staff at risk and feel this is a great safety measure to not only keep staff accountable, but also to protect them from any false accusations,\u201d Hart said.<\/p>\n

Without an automated pill counter handy, staff work hard to keep tabs on drugs going through the pharmacy, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur current workflow is very laborious but provides the checks and balances necessary to prevent diversion,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The Eyecon 9430 would certainly make everything more secure, Hart said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a very fancy pill counter that they\u2019re asking for,\u201d said Robert Valuck, executive director of the Colorado Consortium for Prescription Drug Abuse Prevention and a trained pharmacist. \u201cIts kind of a top-of-the-line pill counter.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said improvements have been made in pharmacies over the past several decades to prevent drug diversion, but the possibility is always there.<\/p>\n

Legal standards exist to keep pharmacies in check, he said. Additionally, organizations like the National Association of Drug Diversion Investigators<\/a> work to counter the risk, he said.<\/p>\n

Most hospital pharmacies that have been surveyed<\/a> report having a dedicated surveillance team and detection software for monitoring controlled substances, although their practices can vary.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s still not impossible to break these systems and get by, but its getting harder,\u201d Valuck said.<\/p>\n

SWORD is expected to announce grant awardees in early December.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Southwest Health System pharmacy seeks SWORD funds to cover a new Eyecon 9430 automated pill counter, costing about $18K<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16891,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-16890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16890"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20450,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16890\/revisions\/20450"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16890"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=16890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}