What can your team do to reduce unnecessary variation?
What can your team to do expand the use of existing technology to provide patients faster service?
Is your department’s supply room or cabinet cluttered with a mix of overstocked, understocked and out-of-date materials? Throughout Kaiser Permanente, unit-based teams are taking stock of their supplies and finding they can save time and money by designing better systems for organizing and ordering supplies. Reducing supply waste is one of many ways that teams are helping KP become more affordable for our members and patients.Sort your supplies to determine which ones to keep, which should be disposed of, and which you need more information about before deciding.
What can your team do to leverage technology to save money and improve the patient experience? What else could you do to help keep KP affordable for our member and patients?
What can your team do to better manage your inventory? What else could you do to save money and keep KP affordable for members and patients?
What can your team do to improve its own business literacy? And help patients make better decisions about their care?
Budget-savvy shoppers know you can save money by buying in bulk—even, it turns out, when you’re buying pharmaceuticals. Just ask the team members of the Zion Outpatient Pharmacy in San Diego.
The unit-based team was able to save more than $1 million over five months by buying drugs in quantity and managing specialty medications better. And, adopting a practice that would make Goldilocks happy, the pharmacy now keeps just the right amount—no more, no less—of high-cost meds in stock. Managing costs helps keep expenses down for members, and the team’s improved communication means better service for patients, whose medications are there when they need them.
Not so long ago, the financial picture looked bleak for the 24-hour pharmacy, which serves discharged hospital patients and other members at the bustling Zion Medical Center. Inventory had swollen to more than $3 million. It was a signal the pharmacy had too much stock on hand and wasn’t turning it over frequently enough.
“We realized that we needed to do something,” says Nathan Close, outpatient pharmacy supervisor and management tri-lead of the 45-member team, which is at Level 4 on the five-point UBT Path to Performance.
Team members set a five-month goal to reduce their bloated inventory by $600,000, from $3.2 million to $2.6 million, starting in January 2016.
Their first step was to review the pharmacy’s ordering and inventory practices. Team members quickly realized they were overstocking oral chemotherapy, Hepatitis C and antiviral medications. At $10,000 a bottle, rarely used pharmaceuticals suck up resources when they sit on shelves. Worse, if they aren’t used or returned to the manufacturer before they expire, they’re a costly mistake.
To get a better handle on prescription trends, team members reached out to ambulatory care pharmacists, who are part of a different team and who collaborate with physicians to treat members with cancer or chronic conditions. By partnering with the pharmacists, the team was able to plan ahead better.
“Once we know what patients are going to need, we make sure that we have that in stock,” says Wesley Frani, a pharmacy assistant and UFCW Local 135 member who is one of the team’s labor tri-leads.
Key to the team’s success is another labor tri-lead, Jane Corby, an inventory control assistant and also a UFCW Local 135 member. She carefully monitors stock levels to ensure that when patients present their prescriptions, the right medications are on hand.
When the Ridgeline Behavioral Health team members in Colorado decided to tackle outside medical costs, even they were surprised at how their small touch on a huge issue could result in such significant savings.
Team members identified two ways they thought they could have an impact—including finding out which of their patients were being seen frequently in the Emergency Department—while helping their patients get appropriate care.
“We know from evidence-based medicine that if patients are seeking care in the Emergency Department for mental health issues, it’s unlikely to provide a long-term improvement in symptoms,” explains Amy Martin, manager of Ridgeline Behavioral Health.
Team members began the project by researching which outside hospitals Kaiser Permanente prefers to have members and patients use. Armed with the new information, they created a flier explaining the options and shared it with the rest of the staff, who then shared it with patients. This way, when patients did access care, they were more likely to go to a facility that KP has a contract with and thus, cut costs.
The results were remarkable. The team’s patients’ visits to emergency departments decreased by 8.25 percent, which in turn reduced ED costs by 26 percent. The total impact for 2016: $1 million in soft-dollar savings.
