When Three Pharmacies Closed: How BD Parata Max™ 2 Helped Fulton County Health Center Keep Up with Increased Prescription Volumes
The Challenge
When a large, national pharmacy chain announced it would be closing its stores across Wauseon, Ohio, Matthew Gerig, RPh, Retail Pharmacy Director at Fulton County Health Center (FCHC), realized that the town of approximately 8000 citizens would need other pharmacies to meet their medication needs. FCHC opened a retail outpatient pharmacy in one of its medical office buildings in 2019 with the goal to ramp up operations to meet the community’s prescription needs. In 2024, local retail pharmacies in Ohio and Michigan shut down.
The pharmacy team was seeking a solution to increase their output without increasing overtime hours. They opted to deploy the BD Parata Max™ 2 Vial Filling Robot for automated dispensing in hopes of addressing the following challenges:
- Significant increase in prescription volume. Within weeks, the pharmacy went from an average of approximately 1700 prescriptions per week to more than 3000 per week.
- Elevated overtime to meet prescription demands. To meet the growth in volume, pharmacy staff accrued more than 461 hours of overtime over a three-month period, costing FCHC more than $35,000.
- Limited time for patient care. The increase in volume made it more challenging for pharmacists and pharmacy technicians to answer the phone, address questions, and review patient medications to optimize therapy, improve adherence, and reduce potential side effects or adverse reactions. As a health system-affiliated retail outpatient pharmacy, FCHC puts a high premium on helping patients with medication therapeutic management (MTM) services, which was also severely impacted by the increase in volume.
The Solution
The BD Parata Max™ 2 Vial Filling Robot is a high-speed, automated solution designed to count, label, cap, and sort common oral solid medications with high precision. While some of the pharmacy staff had worked with other robotic prescription dispensing systems in previous jobs, Kate Roth, a pharmacy technician, said those platforms were often frustrating to use. The BD Parata Max™ 2 Vial Filling Robot, however, was easy for her and the team to learn—and offers streamlined workflows to make the best use of their working hours.
““There were six retail pharmacies across Wauseon and neighboring towns. When three of those pharmacies closed, we had to absorb a large number of those patients. We had so many transfers coming in from the closed pharmacies that we found ourselves with 1000 prescriptions on a Monday and, by the time we closed at 7:00pm that night, we still had 200 prescriptions left to count and fill. We were just buried.”
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— Matthew Gerig, RPh, Retail Pharmacy Director, FCHC
The Impact
The new system allowed the FCHC outpatient pharmacy to:
- Manage prescription volumes with precision and accuracy. The BD Parata Max™ 2 Vial Filling Robot helps the pharmacy team manage approximately 3500 prescriptions each week. Gerig said the team appreciates that they can add product and change cells while the machine is still running, ensuring that the system can handle approximately 40% of the pharmacy’s prescriptions. The group has also seen a drop in counting and labeling errors.
- Streamlined workflows. Pharmacy technicians applaud the ability to easily change out cells and labels. They also appreciate the fact that the system sorts prescriptions once they are filled, making it easier for them to find exactly what they are looking for when a patient comes to the counter. Those combined efficiencies mean they can focus on other aspects of their job, including manually filling prescriptions and helping patients.
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Reduction in overtime. After deploying the BD Parata Max™ 2 Vial Filling Robot, the FCHC outpatient pharmacy was able to reduce overtime hours by 85%. With the Max-2, employees were able to complete their work during their shift—and no longer had to stay after hours to make sure all prescriptions were ready for the next day.
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Increased capacity for patient-centered care. Gerig’s goal when he joined FCHC was to run the outpatient pharmacy like an independent pharmacy—and that meant providing high quality patient care. Since implementing the BD Parata Max™ 2, the team has more time to answer questions, as well as perform MTM activities. With the Max-2 in place, and more time to focus on patients, the pharmacy recouped approximately seven times more paid MTM claims in 2025 than they did the year prior. “The independent pharmacy motto is that the patient comes first,” said Gerig. “We now have time for the clinical pharmacist to sit down with patients and talk about their prescriptions and even help them with open enrollment for Medicare Part D plans. It makes a big difference.”
“The Max is so much faster and easier to use. We take maybe 30 minutes each day to make sure everything’s full and ready to go. Then we have time to answer phones, fill other prescriptions, do data entry, and communicate with our patients.”
— Kate Roth, Pharmacy Technician, FCHC
“We are trying to be as efficient and accurate as possible while putting out this high volume and still being accessible to our patients. Our goal, always, is to serve our community. And having the BD Parata Max™2 allows us to do that.”
— Matthew Gerig, RPh, Retail Pharmacy Director, FCHC
Impact by the Numbers
Purpose-built solution that delivers
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See how BD Parata Max™ 2 can help your pharmacy streamline workflows, reduce overtime, and give staff more time to focus on patient care. Connect with our team to learn how automation can support your growth goals.