The impact of automated dispensing cabinet inventory optimization in a community hospital Joshua Foley, Brian Host Baptist Health Lexington - Lexington, KY
Background/Purpose: In hospitals with decentralized distribution models, inventory management of automated dispensing cabinets should incorporate unit specific drug usage data in order to optimize inventory. The objective of this study is to create and evaluate a procedure for assigning inventory levels in automated dispensing cabinets based on unit-specific data.
Methodology: Three cabinets from different medical-surgical units were optimized based on data from 12 months of dispensing logs. Max and par values were generated from published, validated optimization algorithms. Cabinets 1 and 2 were optimized using algorithm suggestions. Cabinet 3 was optimized using cabinet integrated optimization software. Cabinet 4 was left unchanged. The primary end point was vend:fill ratio. The secondary endpoints were medication stockouts and expirations. These endpoints were evaluated for a period of 120 days before and days after optimization.
Results: Cabinet 1_x0019_s vend:fill ratio increased from 4.97 to 5.43 while Cabinet 2_x0019_s ratio decreased from 5.02 to 4.49. Cabinet 3 saw an increase in vend:fill ratio from 5.20 to 5.29. Cabinet 4 was not optimized and saw vend:fill ratio fall from 5.15 to 4.71. Stockouts as a percentage of dispenses in cabinets 1 and 2 increased from 0.38% and 0.73% to 2.25% and 2.3% respectively. Stockouts in cabinet 3 increased from 0.8% to 1.9% and increased from 0.63% to 0.7% in cabinet 4.
Conclusions: Implementation of a sophisticated data driven optimization approach increased vend:fill ratio in one cabinet while decreasing vend:fill in the other. The software adjusted cabinet saw a small increase in vend:fill. While the primary end point was met for two cabinets, increases in vend:fill came at the expense of increased stockout frequency.
Presentation Objective: To provide an overview of the pharmacy inventory optimization approach adapted by Baptist Health Lexington in cabinet optimization and its impact.
Self-Assessment: Which metric will likely increase when aggressively reducing the cabinet inventory?_x000D_ _x000D_
