Saint Luke's Health System
The Challenge
Saint Luke's primary challenge was a lack of real-time visibility to their medication inventory across the health system. They did not have a standardized data set for buyers and other staff to determine where drugs were located, which led to burdensome and costly manual processes. Saint Luke's growth from acquisitions further accentuated the need to create standardization across locations and increase communications.
National drug shortages exacerbated the inventory challenges. Saint Luke's was monitoring around 150 drug shortages a week, and many buyers and technicians were actively counting 30 to 40 critical medications and populating a spreadsheet to keep track of the stock across the system.
The Solution
Saint Luke's adopted Omnicell intelligence solutions and services as part of a multifaceted approach to medication inventory management. They specifically sought to reduce expired medication expense and increase sharing of low-volume drugs across the health system. Because just 20% of inventory accounted for 80% of drug spend, pharmacy leaders focused on par level management of these high-cost drugs. Their goals included replacing the manual "sticker" system with digitized central pharmacy inventory processes, automating medication inventory management, and expanding previously limited utilization data to determine usage.
The Impact
Adding Omnicell intelligence solutions produced both an immediate impact and long-term results. The main results centered on inventory reduction and improved processes, including reducing drug inventory by 12% systemwide, reducing expired medications, assisting in reducing drug waste by $20,000 per month, and processing over 1,000 line items per month.
The Omnicell partnership has brought Saint Luke's closer to their vision of digitizing medication inventory and gaining visibility across all sites. Future plans include automated reporting of soon-to-expire medications and a centralized distribution center for Saint Luke's Health System. "We were looking for a solution to address several multifaceted challenges, and our Omnicell partnership has assisted us with meeting our goals," said Greg Teale, PharmD, BCPS, VP Pharmacy Services.
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