Pharmacy Production now calls VGH home

Last week, after years of planning and months of construction, members of the Pharmacy Regional Production Centre (RPC), previously co-located with Pharmacy at St. Paul’s Hospital, moved into a new more spacious home on the VGH campus. As part of the move, the service is also changing its name and will now be known as the Vancouver Pharmacy Production Centre (VPPC).

The move itself had to be highly coordinated with many different external groups involved, as production services could not slow down or stop while people, equipment and supplies moved across the city in a series of stages. The centre’s team handled the disruption with calmness and persistence, despite some bumps along the way, and last Friday celebrated their major achievement with smiles and a well-deserved pizza! All can agree that they feel proud of their new purposed-designed space.

As a ‘behind the scenes’ service, the production centre team has been providing specially packaged medication in individual patient dose strips for pharmacies across the region since 2007, and contribute directly to making sure our patients get the right medications, in the right dosage, at the right time.

Demand for the centre’s services has steadily increased, and the expansion of work space will allow the service to grow further and support the demands of all sites within PHC, VCH and PHSA as part of Pharmacy’s preparation for the Clinical and Services Transformation (CST) project.