Large Scale Installation of Intelligent Cabinets Leads to Reduction in Medicine Spend and Reduction of Non-moving Inventory
An ‘intelligent’ Omnicell cabinet system for automating the ordering and control of medicines was installed across 100 wards at St Thomas’ Hospital and Guy’s Hospital. The systems are now being integrated with their ePMA system, Medchart. In addition the Trust deployed 219 inventory supply management systems across all main clinical areas from theatres to the ward. The systems hold £7.9m of inventory and generate approximately 440 orders per day.
The Challenge
- Reduce nurses time preparing and dispensing pharmacy medicines, releasing more time for patients
- Increase patient safety
- Improve the discharge process from wards with increased availabilityof medicines
- To have a safer, controlled and efficient system with no more top-up checks required
- Reduce stock discrepancies with greater accountability
- A full audit trail for each medicine administered
- Decreased ad hoc deliveries from pharmacy to wards
- Reduce nurses time preparing and dispensing pharmacy medicines, releasing more time for patients
- Increase patient safety
- Improve the discharge process from wards with increased availabilityof medicines
- To have a safer, controlled and efficient system with no more top-up checks required
- Reduce stock discrepancies with greater accountability
- A full audit trail for each medicine administered
- Decreased ad hoc deliveries from pharmacy to wards
The Solution
Omnicell Automated Dispensing Cabinets
The implementation of medication automated dispensing system to order and control medicines across 100 wards at St Thomas’ Hospital and Guy’s Hospital. The systems integrated with their ePMA system, Medchart. In addition the Trust deployed 219 inventory supply management systems across all main clinical areas from theatres to the ward.
Omnicell Automated Dispensing Cabinets
The implementation of medication automated dispensing system to order and control medicines across 100 wards at St Thomas’ Hospital and Guy’s Hospital. The systems integrated with their ePMA system, Medchart. In addition the Trust deployed 219 inventory supply management systems across all main clinical areas from theatres to the ward.
The Impact
Improved patient safety, efficiency reducing inventory waste and importantly reducing the amount of time nurses spent on administrative duties therefore freeing uup more time for face to face patient care.
- Transaction time for drugs reduced to just 15 seconds releasing more time for patient care
- Discharge time from the wards is quicker
- Medication errors and incident reports had a sizeable reduction
- Average reduction in additional stock holding is 22% across all systems
- Medicines returned to stores are virtually non-existent. Part packs are returned to the Omnicell cabinet, around £25,000 worth of stock each month.
- Medicine spend down by 10.64% and the ability to do twice as many top ups with the same resource
- More than 101,000 Nursing hours freed up for patient care
- Transaction time reduced by 74%
- 35% Reduction in non-moving inventory
- Inventory re-order levels reduced by 10% in wards 5% in theatres
- Average picking time reduced from 63 seconds to 17 seconds
"From a nurse pushing the button to signal a product has been removed, the process is fully automated with no manual intervention. The system itself is arguably the easiest part."
David Lawson, Chief Procurement Officer, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust.
