Just a few days ago we talked about the financial and legal considerations that you as a decision maker in your practice should consider when it comes to in-house or in-clinic dispensaries. Today we want to talk about picking the right prepackaged pharmaceuticals, another important part of the process.
Two Operational Considerations for Physician Dispensing
- Choosing the right labeling or dispensing system will impact the time it takes to dispense medications in your office. Northwind Pharmaceuticals offers both systems and we will help you implement whichever makes sense for your clinic.
Though dispensing software is better at information retrieval, programs can be more complicated because of the robust reporting options available to help manage your practice. Adopting a dispensing system can take some time to get used to, but the functions available can easily fit into your current processes.
If you opt for a manual system, make sure you don’t have to duplicate entries on bottles and logbooks; you should be able to write the information once and keep a copy through the miracle of carbon imprints.
- Tracking inventory and managing the reorder process can be a challenge. In this case, electronic systems make it easier. Northwind offers a dispensing system that includes manual or automatic ordering and detailed inventory tracking, which will help minimize loss due to expired medications. The best answer is to keep fewer quantities on hand and let your distributor carry the burden of inventory.
If your pharma distributor is frequently out of products or makes you wait weeks for products, then they may not be big enough to meet your ordering requirements. Once we understand a clinic’s ordering pattern, we will adjust our inventory to make sure we have the right products when they are needed.
Interested in Learning More? Keep Reading!
What other operational questions do you have when it comes to in-clinic dispensaries? We want to continue the discussion with a focus on staffing and process considerations in our next post in the series.
