Abstract
Background
Innovative approaches, including LEAN systems and dashboards, to enhance pharmacy production continue to evolve in a cost and safety conscious health care environment. Furthermore, implementing and evaluating the effectiveness of these novel methods continues to be challenging for pharmacies.
Objective
To describe a comprehensive, real-time pharmacy dashboard that incorporated LEAN methodologies and evaluate its utilization in an inpatient Central Intravenous Additives Services (CIVAS) pharmacy.
Methods
Long Beach Memorial Hospital (462 adult beds) and Miller Children's and Women's Hospital of Long Beach (combined 324 beds) are tertiary not-for-profit, community-based hospitals that are served by one CIVAS pharmacy. Metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of CIVAS were developed and implemented on a dashboard in real-time from March 2013 to March 2014.
Results
The metrics that were designed and implemented to evaluate the effectiveness of CIVAS were quality and value, financial resilience, and the department's people and culture. Using a dashboard that integrated these metrics, the accuracy of manufacturing defect-free products was ≥99.9%, indicating excellent quality and value of CIVAS. The metric for financial resilience demonstrated a cost savings of $78,000 annually within pharmacy by eliminating the outsourcing of products. People and value metrics on the dashboard focused on standard work, with an overall 94.6% compliance to the workflow.
Conclusion
A unique dashboard that incorporated metrics to monitor 3 important areas was successfully implemented to improve the effectiveness of CIVAS pharmacy. These metrics helped pharmacy to monitor progress in real-time, allowing attainment of production goals and fostering continuous quality improvement through LEAN work.
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