Pharmacy Inventory Management 

The pressure to keep profits high and costs low is felt through just about any industry. A key to maximizing your pharmacy’s profits is by keeping your drug inventory management under control. It can be a complex process, but it is absolutely critical to your success. The challenge tends to lie in the continually changing environment of healthcare, technology, analytics, and keeping patients safe. 

What Does Your Pharmacy Need to Get Started With Drug Inventory Management?

The most successful and profitable pharmacies have the ability to track inventory through and through. Typically, they use an inventory management system that makes the process completely transparent and customizable. There’s no one-size-fits-all here. Each pharmacy has its own unique problems and ways to overcome them. 

Seeing Clearly with Analytics

Inventory analytics has become a hot item in recent years. It is a whole host of tools that use your historical inventory data to train algorithms that end up providing data-driven insights into your inventory. It can offer forecasts and recommendations. Analytics has the ability to even spot unusual activity. 

Paper order books just cannot alert you when medications are close to expiring. Inventory analytics can! Buying extra items because there is a hot deal can also lead to wasted product. 

Inventory analytics can also ensure that patients are a top priority, identifying when stock needs to be reordered or the demand changes. In fact, a national survey performed by the Institute for Safe Practices found that 20% of practitioners surveyed had reported that adverse patient outcomes occurred because of a lack of inventory management and monitoring of supply levels. 

Capabilities of Drug Inventory Management Systems

Additionally, drug inventory tracking systems are effective for adding, updating, and removing inventory. They can also restrict certain functions to responsible personnel. You can get enhanced reporting capabilities that are great for inventory tracking, but also perfect for regulatory compliance tracking and monitoring. You can be notified when there is a discrepancy in safety, compliance, or any other type of concern based on predefined controls.

Security is also paramount with a drug inventory management system. Systems can be controlled with a username and password or biometric login. You can choose which personnel have access and to which degree. It is ideal to keep system administrators to a minimum. Especially if there is a change in an employee’s status, you want to have control over who and how they can have access. 

Completing an Internal Audit

One way to check on your inventory status at the present time is to conduct an inventory audit. An internal audit can answer many questions about the efficiency and efficacy of your drug inventory management. Finding the holes are key to improving your bottom line. Here are some key places to pinpoint during your internal audit:

• Is the formulary appropriate?
•  Analyze drug costs compared to industry standards and expected reimbursement to identify high-cost outliers.  
• Are your controlled substances ordered appropriately?
• Are appropriate approvals in place prior to invoice payment? 
• Are drugs secured and stored appropriately within the pharmacy? Conduct a physical walkthrough to observe your storage, security, and controlled substances. 
• When and how do you track drug discrepancies and monitoring levels of products? How often is this occurring?
• Monitor who has access to your drug systems and their level of authority. 
• Do you have the necessary protocols set in place in case of a recall?
• What is your process for identifying expired drugs? Take a walk through your pharmacy and scan the current inventory to see if you have anything close to expiring. 
• Do you have a waste management program?
• What is your current process for when a drug shortage occurs? Does the entire staff follow the same process? Update this policy if it is outdated or not followed.

Final Thoughts

Being mindful and thoughtful over your pharmacy drug inventory management is crucial for accuracy, profit margins, and the safety of staff and patients alike. By efficiently tracking your inventory from the time of purchase, you can ensure increased revenue and decrease the likelihood of drug shortages. Additionally, restricting access to certain parts of your inventory management can reduce the risk of theft, and ensure employees have the proper and appropriate access for their role. As the healthcare industry looks to continually meet patient care challenges coupled with being cost-effective, change and technology are a must.