BILH Pharmacy Goes Above and Beyond to Deliver Medication to a Patient

Dedicated Pharmacists

Imagine a team of pharmacists so committed to your wellbeing, they are willing to deliver your prescription meds on a Friday night in the middle of a storm — just to make sure you don’t miss a dose. For one patient of Beth Israel Lahey Health (BILH) Pharmacy, that’s exactly what happened.

Desperate Times, Desperate Measures

Late one Friday night, pharmacists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) received an urgent call from the transplant team: One of their organ recipients was out of immunosuppressants and was struggling to get their hands on a refill. Pharmacies on Cape Cod, where the patient lived, didn’t have the drug in stock for a local delivery and courier services had closed for the weekend.

It would have been easy for the BILH Pharmacy team to wait until Monday morning to get things under control, but Jigar Mehta, outpatient pharmacy manager for BILH Pharmacy, knows that’s not how they operate.

“We don’t default to, ‘Sorry, I wish we could help you,’" he says. “Instead, we’ll actively seek solutions to ensure patients receive the care they need, when they need it."

But as pharmacists worked behind the scenes, the patient grew flustered the longer they went without a solution, eventually facing the stark possibility that they might miss a dose. When they stopped contacting the pharmacy altogether, the team knew the situation called for extraordinary action.

They didn’t need to wait long for their hero to step up to the challenge.

Joana Pango, pharmacy lead technician for BILH Pharmacy, volunteered to drive the entire 70-mile trek from Boston to Cape Cod to deliver the medications herself. Known for her deep sense of empathy, she took seriously the trust her patients placed in BILH Pharmacy.

Ultimately, it was this sense of mission that motivated her to act.

“She felt a sense of responsibility and empathy to know this was a moment when she really needed to act in the patient’s best interest,” Mehta says.

Meeting the Highest Standard of Patient Care

Hours later, when Pango finally trudged through the rain onto that Cape Cod doorstep, the patient was in disbelief.

“The patient was overcome with relief and gratitude,” Mehta says, “and expressed profound appreciation for the extraordinary lengths the pharmacy team went to ensure uninterrupted care.” 

This grateful patient also realized something they didn’t know about the way BILH operates — our clinical teams work in tandem to deliver care that is truly multidisciplinary; that’s why their call to the transplant team eventually found its way to the pharmacy team, who manages their medications. Then BILH Pharmacy got the right team on the job.

Back in Boston, the entire episode served as a model of the level of care the team aspires to every day.

“For the newer team members, it was a powerful introduction to what our pharmacy is all about,” Mehta states. And although the pharmacy does its best to avoid emergency situations like this, Mehta continues, “It reinforced the team’s shared values of empathy, perseverance and commitment to ensuring patients receive the care they need.”

Learn more about BILH Pharmacy.