Trinitas Regional Medical Center

Trinitas Regional Medical Center (TRMC) is the latest facility to join RWJBarnabas on 1/1/2022. TRMC was established in 2000 following the consolidation of Elizabeth General Medical Center and St. Elizabeth Hospital. It is a Catholic teaching hospital with oversight provided by the Sisters of Charity of St. Elizabeth. Trinitas is the only hospital in Elizabeth, a densely populated low-income urban immigrant city with a population of over 129,000. Operating on two major campuses, Trinitas has 554 beds, including a 120 bed long-term care center and a 98 bed Behavioral Health and Psychiatric facility. Annually, we treat nearly 20,000 inpatients and see over 450,000 outpatient visits. At Trinitas, we dedicate ourselves to God's healing mission. We strive to provide excellent, compassionate health care to the people and communities we serve, including those among us who are poor and vulnerable. As one of the state’s top Charity Care provider, TRMC is focused on helping the working poor and impoverished people of the Greater Elizabeth Region and Union County. As such we are a 340B hospital and all staff work hard to manage this program and provide oversite for compliance.

The pharmacy department at Trinitas has a total staff of 45 employees. Our electronic clinical information system utilizes computerized physician order entry as well as bedside medication barcode scanning during medication administration. This system contributes to safe medication administration and allows pharmacists to run drug drug, food-drug and disease state interactions to help them make accurate clinical decisions during drug dispensing. Our technicians manage drug inventory using automatic dispensing machines throughout the hospital as well as in outpatient clinics. In addition, our Lead Pharmacist helps our department maintain high standards in sterile preparation while our Lead Technician focuses on evaluating metrics for Pyxis optimization.

Trinitas boast of very strong and knowledgeable pharmacy technicians, with 98% of them receiving their PTCB certification. Technicians work closely with the pharmacists to ensure safe medication practices. Whether it’s preparing complex extemporaneous eye surgery preparations or playing an instrumental role in managing the hospital’s outpatient clinics, our technicians are an integral part of the Trinitas pharmacy team. In addition to medication verification and dispensing, our staff pharmacists perform clinical monitoring activities such as remote ICU rounding, IV to PO conversions, adverse drug reaction reports, medication variance reporting and antimicrobial stewardship activities. In fact the Antimicrobial Stewardship Program is well established with a multidisciplinary team who achieved the Silver Recognition Award for NJ DOH Antimicrobial Stewardship Recognition Program. Pharmacists serve as a drug information resource, working closely with our multidisciplinary team to ensure high level care and assisting in the medication management of chronic disease states. Our vigilant narcotic audit process, which is spearheaded by pharmacy department, has helped to reduce any possibility of diversion. Pharmacists work diligently to provide excellent pharmaceutical services to our patients and perform over 1,000 interventions per month on average.

Trinitas acute care pharmacy also provide services to three outpatient dialysis centers, one mixed dialysis unit, and serve as the main pharmacy for our off-site general psychiatric hospital at the New Point campus. Pharmacy department at Trinitas prepares an estimated 3500 epoetin alpha doses per month together with all other dialysis related medications needed to effectively care for the patients at these centers. In addition, all psychiatric orders and medication therapy management for New Point campus are prepared and dispensed from the acute care pharmacy on Williamson Street. Our psychiatric drug replacement program, which is managed in collaboration with staff at our New Point Campus, aims at increasing medication adherence post discharge and reducing recidivism. Our oncology pharmacy satellite is situated and fully integrated into our state of the art oncology center, which is a center of excellence as a Community Cancer Program. Pharmacists at this satellite work collaboratively with our oncologists, using the most up to date drug information systems and clinical tools, to formulate the most appropriate course of therapy for each of our cancer patients. Our oncology program now has the additional advantage of networking with the system, in particular with the Cancer Institute of New Jersey.

Pharmacy at Trinitas is always striving for excellence. The Management teams participates in many collaborative efforts including our Stroke Program, which has TJC Primary Stroke Certification and our Joint Program, which Is TJC Certified. Future plans for our department include increasing pharmacist presence on the floors, expanding our clinical monitoring activities and continuing to bridge the gap between pharmacy and other disciplines. We remain committed to our pledge of a High Reliability Organization and are continuously improving in effort to facilitate excellent patient care.