The practice of pharmacy is a vital part of a complete health care system. The number of people requiring health care services has steadily increased, and this trend will likely continue. Due to many of society's changing social and health issues, men and women in pharmacy will face new challenges, expanded responsibilities, and an ever-increasing growth in opportunities.Some of these issues include increases in average life span and the increased incidence of chronic diseases; the increased complexity, number, and sophistication of medications and related products and devices; increased emphasis on primary and preventive health services, home health care, and long term care; and conce ...view middle of the document...
In addition to direct, patient care involvement, pharmacists in hospitals are responsible for systems which control drug distribution and are designed to assure that each patient receives the appropriate medication, in the correct form and dosage, at the correct time. Hospital pharmacists maintain records on each patient, using them not only to fill medication orders but also to screen for drug allergies and adverse drug effects.Contemporary hospital pharmacy practice is composed of a number of highly specialized areas, including nuclear pharmacy, drug and poison information, and intravenous therapy. In addition, pharmacists provide specialized services in adult medicine, pediatrics, oncology, ambulatory care, and psychiatry. The nature and size of the hospital helps to determine the extent to which these specialized services are needed. Because of the diversity of activities involved in pharmacy departments, there is also an increasing demand for management expertise, including finance and budgeting, personnel administration, systems development, and planning.Approximately 38,000 registered pharmacist's work on a full- or part-time basis in hospitals or nursing homes. As hospital pharmacists continue to become more involved in providing patient-oriented services, the demand for practitioners in this area of pharmacy continues to grow. Recent years have also seen dramatic growth in pharmacy services in health maintenance organizations (HMO's) and related organizations that offer coordinated ambulatory care by a multidisciplinary staff of health professionals, including pharmacists. In this setting, pharmacists provide primary leadership in the development of both clinical and administrative systems that manage and improve the use of medications. (Carleton, T., 2008).With increasing operation costs, patient safety awareness, and a shortage of trained personnel, it is becoming increasingly important for hospital pharmacy management to make good operational decisions. In the case of hospital inpatient pharmacies, making decisions about staffing and work flow is difficult due to the complexity of the systems used and the variation in the orders to be filled. Pharmacy turnaround time is a crucial metric for patient safety and caregivers' satisfaction. Pharmacy management is under constant demand to reduce turnaround time. In order to help The Methodist Hospital Pharmacy Management make decisions about workflow, a team was created to analyze the impact of an alternate work process. The team examined the impact of the process and workflow changes on the amount of time medication orders take to be processed. The goal is to help the pharmacy management team find the best process and workflow to get medications to the patients as quickly as possible. Systems Thinking and Kaizen are used as tools to achieve that goal by using pharmacy staff effectively and make the process more efficient.The pharmacy division's initial goals for 2006-07 were to incre...
