The business case for pharmacy automation

Today’s hospitals operate on razor-thin margins, increasing the need for efficiency in all areas of the hospital system, including the pharmacy. Pharmacy automation is a game changer that is helping hospitals across the country to improve patient outcomes and reduce expenses over the long term.

But, before health care organizations can enjoy these benefits, their executive teams must first buy into the concept of pharmacy automation. Some key advantages that help make the business case are:

• Pharmacy automation allows hospital pharmacists, physicians and nurses to operate more efficiently and effectively with greater collaboration and one-on-one patient time as pharmacists move from manual pill counting to utilizing their professional expertise in a broader fashion throughout the hospital.
• Pharmacy automation reduces the opportunity for drug diversion by improving issues with inventory control. The need for nurse overtime to report drug inventories at a shift’s end is eliminated, reducing overall costs. 
• Pharmacy automation helps to reduce the long-term cost of providing health care by improving patient outcomes and reducing hospital stays because pharmacists are now freed up to go on rounds with physicians and see patients on the floor.
• The initial cost of automation is quickly overcome by increased efficiencies in the hospital system, better use of professional staff time, more one-on-one time with patients and management of pharmaceutical drugs in procurement and dispensation.  

For C-suite leaders to get on board with automation, it is important that they understand the benefits and the return on investment of bringing automation into their facilities. Without understanding the results of automation, the C-suite will just see automation as another expense because they are working on such tight financial margins.

Once a hospital’s administrative team understands the long-term cost savings that automation brings from refocusing and repurposing pharmacists onto the hospital floor, they start to recognize the value, and their acceptance comes quickly.