By Josh Hall and Troy Gillard

Festival of Trees supporting automated dispensing system at Red Deer Regional

Nov 19, 2018 | 4:09 PM

The Red Deer Festival of Trees is celebrating its silver anniversary.

This year’s 25th annual event, which gets underway with the preview dinner Wednesday and runs through Sunday, is raising funds to support the purchase of Pyxis automated dispensing systems for several units at Red Deer Regional Hospital, including emergency, ICU/NICU, operating room, recovery room, cardiology and select outpatient areas.

“(We are) upgrading to a new piece of technology for the hospital to make it more streamlined and better able to communicate with all the appropriate units and with the pharmacy,” explains Travis Kuschminder with the Red Deer Regional Health Foundation.

“Most importantly, they have a lot of great electronic features for safety and efficiency for our patients. We’re taking something old school and bringing it into the 21st century.”

Over 1,000 new medication orders are written by prescribers and processed at the hospital each day and 13,000 units of medication are dispensed on the care areas every 24 hours. All processes are currently paper-based and manual.

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Kuschminder says the automated units are being phased in over two years starting this year. This year’s goal for Festival of Trees is to raise $1.3 million to complete phase one.

“A nurse is able to login to the Pyxis station to see the outlook of what patient needs what prescription at what time. It can actually break down the schedule for a nurse… they are better able to plan their day instead of going back and forth to check records.”

The Festival of Trees has raised over $15 million for Red Deer Regional Hospital over the past 24 year. This year’s event expects to entertain over 20,000 guests with the help over more than 2,000 volunteers.

“It’s literally a year in the making. There are so many volunteer hours that are put in behind the scenes,” Kuschminder reveals.

Popular annual events include the Preview Dinner, Business Lunch, Festival of Wines, Breakfast with Santa, Candy Cane Lane, Taste of Red Deer and Father/Daughter Evening.

“When you come as a guest I really believe you’ll feel the spirit of Christmas, and you’ll really enjoy the events that the Festival of Trees is known for,” says Kuschminder, “it’s like Santa’s Village came from the North Pole to Red Deer for a few days.”

For more information on events or being involved with the Festival of Trees, visit reddeerfestivaloftrees.ca or call 403-343-4773.