Related Experiment Videos
Re-engineering a pharmacy work system and layout to facilitate patient counseling
1Division of Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy, University of Cincinnati, OH, USA. alex.lin@uc.edu
Summary
A redesigned pharmacy work system and facility layout optimize staff time, enabling increased patient counseling without additional personnel. This improves community pharmacy efficiency and patient care.
Area of Science:
- Pharmacy Practice
- Health Systems Engineering
- Workforce Optimization
Background:
- Community pharmacies face challenges in optimizing pharmacist and technician time.
- Increasing patient counseling is a goal for many community pharmacies.
- Existing workflows may not support efficient patient interaction.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop and evaluate a new work system and facility design for community pharmacies.
- To enhance pharmacist and technician time utilization.
- To facilitate increased patient counseling without increasing staff.
Main Methods:
- Observation and activity recording of pharmacy personnel in six chain pharmacies.
- Development of new pharmacy designs in collaboration with a university design class.
- Computer simulation to test the efficacy of the new design and work system.
Main Results:
- The new system designates pharmacists for prescription review, dispensing, and counseling, while technicians handle data entry and filling.
- Computer simulation indicated that the redesigned system allows for increased patient counseling with only a slight increase in patient waiting time.
- No additional personnel were required to implement the enhanced patient counseling.
Conclusions:
- The redesigned layout and work system effectively facilitate patient counseling in community pharmacies.
- The optimized workflow maximizes the utilization of employee time.
- This model offers a scalable solution for improving community pharmacy services.