Demands on hospital leaders' time take a toll on ability to drive innovation
More than 50 percent of hospital executives reported that healthcare industry pressures, along with the lack of time and resources, prohibit them from focusing on innovative initiatives for the hospital, according to a new Cardinal Health survey of hospital C-suite decision makers. And, more than two-thirds of respondents revealed that they don't even consider the innovation that can be leveraged within the hospital pharmacy.
"They seldom are afforded the time or resources to look internally at ways they can drive innovative change with the resources they already have, like their hospital pharmacy," said Debbie Weitzman, president of U.S. Pharmaceutical Distribution at Cardinal Health. "A high-performing pharmacy can – and should – serve as a center of innovation for the hospital that delivers critical care to patients."
Nearly 68 percent of survey respondents reported that pharmacies were not a focus area of innovation. In addition, despite expectations of hospital leaders to drive improvements, hospital leaders indicated that 50 percent of all pharmacy-related innovation or improvements were the result of reactionary decisions to external industry changes. This creates an opportunity for hospitals to uncover better ways to leverage the pharmacy department to drive innovation, efficiency and improvement, noted Weitzman.
Here are 3 ways hospital pharmacies can improve hospital profitability and patient outcomes:
· Identify the true costs of medication utilization. When hospital leaders understand the true cost of medication utilization across the hospital, it enables them to identify the most impactful clinical programs to improve patient outcomes and realize meaningful savings.
· Drive continuous compliance with changing standards and regulatory requirements, which can be resource-intensive and complicated to implement across multiple hospital departments and teams.
· Create cost-efficient solutions that supplement on-site pharmacy teams to meet the increased demand for services. Today, pharmacists are members of patient care teams, and are being asked to provide services that were previously met by providers, like medication reconciliation and discharge patient counseling. In order to meet these new demands, many pharmacies leverage remote pharmacy models as a cost-efficient solution to supplement on-site pharmacy teams.
