In the pharmacy store, a single pack of an oncology drug, a biologic or an advanced therapy can be worth more than all the supplies on a hospital ward. That is why a stock error here is expensive, and why it usually goes unnoticed until the next count.
The problem is not what you buy, but what you cannot see
Most pharmacy departments control what comes in well. What is harder to see is what happens afterwards: how many units are really there, where they are, who took them out and how long they have been in the store. When that information arrives late or by hand, three familiar situations appear:
- Expiries found too late. A high-cost unit that expires unused is money that cannot be recovered.
- Stock duplicated as a precaution. If nobody is sure what is there, more is ordered. Capital tied up in the store grows without any improvement in care.
- Unexplained inventory differences. When the count does not match the records, it is rarely clear when or why the difference arose.
What changes when every unit is identified
The underlying change is moving from controlling product references to controlling units. With every unit identified, pharmacy knows what is there, which batch it belongs to and when it expires, and can act before a unit is lost. Access control completes the picture: each withdrawal is linked to a person, so stock no longer depends on the memory of whoever manages it.
The physical format matters less. Some pharmacies keep these medicines in a cabinet; others in a controlled-access area of the store. What matters is that what comes in, what goes out and who takes it are recorded without extra work for the team.
Five questions before you start
Before choosing any tool, the pharmacy department should be able to answer these:
- How many high-cost medicines does the store hold, and which account for most of the value?
- Is the real stock of each one known today without a manual count?
- How many units expired unused in the last year, and what did they cost?
- Who can withdraw these medicines, and is every withdrawal recorded?
- Which systems should exchange information with the store (purchasing, ERP, hospital information system)?
It is best to leave the last question open. The platform gives visibility on its own, and its full value comes from integration with hospital systems, with a scope defined in each project.
Start where it hurts most
There is no need to cover the whole pharmacy at once. A good starting point is the group of medicines with the most value or the most expiries, measuring for a few weeks how much stock there really is and how much is lost. With those data, the conversation with the finance department stops being an opinion.
To see how this control is organised, read our High-cost medicines solution, or assess the current state of your pharmacy store with us. In Stockouts and surpluses in the same hospital we explain why the same problem appears in other units.