Managing Medicines in the Hospital Pharmacy: Logistics Inefficiencies

This paper attempts to gain a better understanding on the main issues affecting the management of medicines in hospitals by defining and analyzing the main logistics inefficiencies executed by the hospital pharmacy. This field research was conducted in a North American hospital which represents the main research site. Three other hospitals and other healthcare organizations have been involved in order to validate empirical evidence. We relied on multiple sources such as observations, process mapping and semi-structured interviews in order to allow triangulation and strengthen the validity of results. From the reception of medicines at hospital docks to their distribution to the hospital pharmacy, we identified an important number of inefficiencies, namely incorrect inventory management, medicine shrinkage, intensive manual labor, long procurement cycles, time-consuming product recalls and improper use of technology.