Stock control systems
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Perhaps the earliest IT to be introduced into pharmacy practice, stock control systems allowed the production of a clear printed label, often with information support about interaction checking and materials management for medicine procurement.
Stock control systems
Perhaps the earliest
IT to be introduced into pharmacy practice, stock control systems allowed the
production of a clear printed label, often with information support about
interaction checking and materials management for medicine procurement. Many
systems produced limited management information allowing pharmacists to review
the use of medicines – by specialty, for ex-ample. This drug use review was
particularly helpful to the financial side of medicines management and it has
been extensively used in the USA. There the use of systems for billing purposes
has ensured good-quality data capture and reporting.
In the UK the
provision of drug expenditure information showing month-on-month comparisons
and top 50 expenditure items on a trust or specialty level is common practice.
We underestimate the ease with which such infor-mation becomes available due to
its routine collection during the supply and dispensing process. The advent of
payment by results and exclusions, as well as service line reporting to support
foundation trust status and hospital at-home services, has forced the
development of more detailed reporting. This has created a number of challenges
as the information may be required at patient level, necessitating the
development of often manual data collection/reporting, as stock control and
other IT systems are not always sufficiently developed.
The use of patient
medication records, common in community pharma-cies, has had relatively limited
application in hospital practice but has poten-tial advantages in operational
terms which are beginning to be realised.
Information is being
used to reduce unnecessary redispensing, facilitate one-stop dispensing and also
to track individual patient costs to support, for example, payment by results.
Sadly, systems are
still not as developed or utilised as they might be. This has been particularly
challenging as the national programme for IT did not include pharmacy stock
control systems for hospitals. Thus there has been no national standard defined
for system functionality or development; drug files largely continue to be
maintained at each site, interfaces with third-party databases are in their
relative infancy and there is no requirement for an up-to-date system to be in
place.
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