10 Quick Tips for Efficient Veterinary Pharmacy Management
Efficient veterinary pharmacy management allows you to control stock and inventory levels so that necessary medications are always available for clients and pets. Accurate medication management is crucial for ensuring positive patient outcomes and providing clients with top-tier service. Pharmacy management also impacts the practice’s finances.
Veterinary teams revamping pharmacy protocols should focus on reducing dispensing errors, streamlining workflows, and maintaining ideal inventory levels. Here are some quick tips for teams to address and overcome veterinary pharmacy pain points.
1. Label and categorize
Label medications clearly using a logical classification system, which could include drug type, drug usage, or alphabetical categories. Many practices find a strategy that organizes drugs by usage and then alphabetically within each grouping works well. Keep all backstock in one area to minimize inventory hassles, if possible.
2. Try inventory management software
Inventory management is every practice leader’s worst nightmare. However, digital inventory solutions that integrate with practice management software can assist in tracking stock and ordering at the appropriate time. Use reports and your PIMs or inventory application data to adjust the reorder levels and quantities.
3. Maintain an online veterinary pharmacy
Online pharmacies help practices compete with major retailers while keeping manufacturer guarantees intact and creating a new hospital revenue stream. Clients like convenient features such as auto-ship and refill reminders, and veterinary teams enjoy a fully digital prescription authorization process. Additionally, mobile apps and patient portals allow clients to request refills online, which encourages compliance and eliminates the need to call the clinic.
4. Train your team
Veterinary team members who handle patient prescriptions must be trained regularly in proper medication handling, storage, and labeling, including safety risks and protocols. Ideally, team members who handle medications should understand basic uses and dose ranges, so they can catch prescriber or transcription errors that could harm a patient.
5. Empower team members
Support staff can, and should, take the lead in the pharmacy. Veterinary technicians are well-suited to manage pharmacy responsibilities and ensure requests are approved and filled promptly and accurately. Train credentialed team members appropriately and then empower them to take ownership of the pharmacy with the autonomy to fill, deny, or request approval for refills.
6. Develop and stick to protocols
Detailed standard operating procedures (SOPs) should include training goals for new hires. They should address all the veterinary pharmacy process steps, including outpatient dispensing, refills, client communication, medical record documentation, payment, cleaning, stocking, and inventory processes. This ensures that all team members perform pharmacy tasks consistently.
7. Implement checks and balances
A two-step medication verification process can drastically reduce dispensing errors in a busy veterinary practice. A team member who fills a prescription should always ask another team member to check the stock bottle to ensure the medication is correct and has not expired. The second person should also check the label to ensure the appropriate medication quantity and patient information.
8. Use checklists
Checklists can help in many clinic areas by ensuring busy, tired, or distracted team members don’t miss any steps in the medication dispensing, refill, or inventory counting processes. A checklist can serve as a quick reference, reminding team members of correct protocols and further reducing errors.
9. Conduct inventory audits
Veterinary pharmacy inventory turns over quickly, and miscounted medications can mean inaccurate numbers in your PIMs. Monthly audits to count high-value pharmacy items prevent these inaccuracies from carrying over to the next month and causing major problems at the end of the quarter or year.
10. Rotate stock
The standard first-in, first-out stocking and inventory systems ensure older stock gets used before newer inventory, helping ensure accurate stock counts and expiration dates. Train team members who are stocking shelves to always add new inventory behind current stock and to number boxes or bottles purchased in large quantities to reduce confusion.
Efficient veterinary pharmacy systems can improve workflow, reduce dispensing errors, and help ensure clients comply with their pets’ healthcare plans. Adopting the right systems and strategies can minimize disruptions and help teams stay organized to deliver the high-level care clients and pets deserve.
