Data and Analytics: The Backbone of Pharmacy

Chris Newman
PharmD, MSHA, Vice President of Clinical Services, Archbold Medical Center

Andrea Jarzyniecki
PharmD, Director of Pharmacy, Archbold Medical Center

Pharmacists and other healthcare practitioners face many risks in the supply chain. Data is stored across different healthcare facilities, making it difficult for them to make decisions about inventory management since they often need to access this information manually before making any intelligent choices.

Archbold Medical Center is a thriving health system with four hospitals, three nursing homes, 540 beds, and thousands of patients. Our medical staff consists of nearly 200 qualified specialists, and we employ more than 2,500 people. Archbold has had a reputation for high-quality, compassionate care for over 90 years to the people of South Georgia and North Florida.

The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) identified 211 tracked drug shortages in 2010, the highest year on record. Our medication supply chain was strained more than ever before. With so many drugs in short supply, identifying the location of every vial or capsule became a required step.

2012 became the turning point for Archbold to escape its dark ages. Patients felt disconnected with pharmacists isolated behind one area of care within hospitals, motivating us to find an automated solution that would bring our staff out from the shadows and into more direct contact to support patient needs. Adding remote inventory visibility would help us identify breaking points in the supply chain and allow us to mitigate them.

Partnering with Omnicell was a turning point for our organization, allowing us to work collaboratively to shape our programs and future strategy to leverage intelligence solutions to gain visibility and insights into our medication supply chain.

Leadership has embraced inventory management. Medications were a considerable expense for us, and it was impossible to keep track of our inventory. Developing an inventory management philosophy would give us intelligence on how much stock was wasted. We also were able to justify expenditures on the latest equipment and projects.

Now with the Omnicell One data intelligence solution, we can capture data, which helps dramatically improve pharmacy operations. Other benefits of the Omnicell One implementation include: 

• Automation of pharmacy enabled us to accomplish more with less
• Moved from a defensive to offensive strategy
• Increased inventory visibility, reduced waste, and improved shortage management
• Allowed pharmacists to practice at the top of their license
• Improved workflow efficiencies for nursing

By embracing intelligence solutions from Omnicell, we are now entirely on the path to operating a fully autonomous pharmacy, moving our pharmacy toward a zero-error culture. Omnicell's intelligence platforms help us find creative ways to develop solutions using metrics and comparative benchmarks to decrease variability and reduce the number of human touchpoints in the dispensing process.

We believe that better inventory insight through intelligence solutions opened the door to the autonomous pharmacy for Archbold.

Hear more in our recent presentation Data and Analytics: The Backbone of Pharmacy. Join us soon for our continuing blog series on the importance of data in pharmacy.

Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company. Assumptions made in the analysis are not reflective of the position of any entity other than the author(s). These views are always subject to change, revision, and rethinking at any time and may not be held in perpetuity.