Independent Health Services, Inc. (IHS Pharmacy) is a family-owned business located in northeast Alabama. Roy Sanderson, the President and owner of IHS, has been in the pharmacy business for more than 50 years. During these years, he has practiced different kinds of pharmacy, including retail, respiratory, and most recently, since 1999 with IHS, correctional pharmacy.
IHS specializes in providing medication and pharmaceutical services to city, county, and some private correctional facilities. Currently, IHS serves approximately 452 correctional facilities, in 24 states. IHS’s correctional facilities range in size from the smallest city jail with just a few inmates on medication, to large, private prisons and detention facilities with capacities in excess of 1500 inmates.
The Sandersons have always tried to be at the forefront of pharmacy technology. In fact, IHS was founded because of a specialty medication packaging machine that the Sandersons acquired to provide medication for assisted living facilities. The machine, called AutoMed, is able to package patient-specific medications in packets by dose, in time and date order, with the packets attached together in a strip.
Medication dispensed by the AutoMed machine is more accurate than medication dispensed by human pharmacists. Additionally, medication administered in the packaging provided by the AutoMed machine is much less likely to be administered to the wrong patient or incorrectly. Finally, medication in AutoMed packaging requires little or no “set up”, and therefore, it greatly reduces staff time spent preparing medication for administration