Reducing Medication Waste Is Essential
Throwing away prescriptions may be agonizing, especially with rising drug costs and the ever-present threat of drug shortages. And it's expensive. The cost of unused drug waste in the healthcare system is estimated to be $800 million per year. One 240-bed institution, for example, estimated its annual expired pharmaceutical waste to be worth $200,000.
It's tough to deliver pharmaceuticals before they expire due to poor inventory management methods. Expired drugs, however, are not the only source of waste. Other factors to consider are:
Low inventory rotations and excess inventory
Small shelf life for high-cost drugs
Misplaced or misplaced medications in units
Medication shrinkage due to drug change
Data intelligence can help reduce pharmaceutical waste in pharmacies.
Transparency in inventory – where each dose is kept, when it expires, and where the biggest demand for each medication is per site means you are more positioned to reduce medication waste and ensure doctors have access to the prescriptions patients require. With spreadsheets, forms, or manual processes, this level of optimization is impossible. To provide predictive and prescriptive analytics, today's data intelligence solutions are simple to use.
The healthcare institutions have firsthand knowledge with the benefits of pharmacy data intelligence systems. They have uncovered systemic concerns with their drug inventory management with the commencement of the COVID-19 epidemic, including:
Expiration of drugs due to overstocking of cabinet inventory
Critical drug shortages
Low inventory turns
Manual and unconnected operations, in which each facility managed inventories separately, exacerbated these problems.
Visual inspection and anecdotal evidence were used to make reordering decisions than hard data.
The pharmacy leaders needed a holistic, systematic strategy to inventory management to address these issues. Some were able to acquire comprehensive insight across all of its facilities after implementing Omnicell Intelligence Solutions, which allowed them to optimize inventory, increase turnovers, and cut down on wasteful medicine spending.
There has been a 39% drop in days on hand and huge reduction in on-hand inventory in less than three months. During the same time period, they witnessed a 59% increase in inventory turns and saved nearly $425,000 on prescription inventory.
The financial, clinical, and operational implications of using data for deciding on inventory management are becoming clear to purchasers. Other ways that technology aids in the reduction of drug waste.
Drug automation systems offer capabilities that can help reduce costly medication waste in addition to data intelligence solutions that provide pharmacy performance dashboards.
Waste reduction is aided by central pharmacy automation that includes expiration date tracking. The Omnicell XR2 Automated Central Pharmacy System, for example, uses complex algorithms to ensure that prescriptions that are about to expire are delivered first.
IV compounding automation and dependable services, including low-cost cGMP stability tests to support beyond-use dates.
Misplaced or lost pharmaceutical waste is reduced through systems that automate the process of managing patient-specific drugs within the dispensing cabinet.
Medication waste is a significant problem to address, but there are a number of measures that may be used to guarantee that more prescriptions are given to patients and less are wasted. Health institutions can achieve better control of their pharmaceutical supply chain by using advanced tools and pharmacy automation technologies.
Physician dispensary or in office dispensing system is greatly beneficial for reducing medication waste. For the said systems, see us at PD-RX Pharmaceuticals.
**Disclaimer: The information on this page is not intended to be a doctor's advice, nor does it create any form of patient-doctor relationship.