When the flooding of the Souris River divided Minot, N.D., and forced a well-known regional pharmacy chain, Thrifty White, to close its pharmacy in the flooded Arrowhead Shopping Center, the chain turned to TCGRx to deploy a turnkey pharmacy at a temporary location.

Duane Chudy, president of TCGRx, notes that the company's Beacon system is ideal for this type of emergency. "It is a modular and prebuilt pharmacy that can be set up in under 24 hours, within a few hundred square feet," he says. A Beacon system with 100% of the formulary can be as small as 400 square feet. According to Chudy, behind the medication storage and retrieval software is an inventory control and reporting function that tracks inventory level, medication use, returnable inventory, expired inventory, and will-call expiration. The Beacon system replaces the traditional method of alphabetized medication organization with a computerized system based on 
usage. Low-power LED lights direct the pharmacist to the medication stock location or will-call location, which is then verified by a barcode scan.