Pharmacy Hospital/Clinic Pharmacies and Operations Management the

Pharmacy Hospital/Clinic Pharmacies and Operations Management The ongoing healthcare debate in this country is not just about the ethicality of medicinal practice, profits, and limitations on access to care, but is also fundamentally and directly about cost. As medical facilities are expected to provide more and more services by upgrading technologies, maintaining current knowledge bases, and often increasing staff, they are also being accused (in part) of contributing to the rising costs of healthcare.

Finding a way to balance the provision of comprehensive and quality care with cost efficiency is thus a major concern for hospitals and clinics in the modern era, and there are many steps that can be taken to enhance cost efficiency. The operation of pharmacies is one area that many hospitals and clinics could examine to determine if it is truly a cost effective and worthwhile endeavor given their overall effects on operations at the medical facility.

The operation of in-hospital pharmacies can have numerous effects on overall operations management at the facility. Typically, in-hospital or in-clinic pharmacies must serve both in-patient and out-patient populations, with a heavier emphasis on the former (Stephens 2006). This can greatly ease the provision of medicine to patients upon their discharge form the facility, and can also generate revenue for hospitals and clinics through the sale of pharmaceuticals (Stepehens 2006).

At the same time, pharmacies represent a greater challenge to security operations, financial and administrative operations, and can create greater and more complex responsibilities for nursing and medical staff (Stephens 2006). Understanding the balance of these effects in a specific organization is key to determining cost effectiveness.

Just as there are many ways in which the maintaining of an in-hospital or in-clinic pharmacy affects overall operations in a medical facility, there are also many ways in which the finances of that medical facility are affected by this pharmacy, which provides a variety of different ways to measure and analyze the cost considerations of pharmacy operation (Langabeer 2005). Staffing needs, wholesaler procurement, insurance costs and potential financial considerations arising from mislabeling, mis-dosing, etc., all present financial liabilities to the hospital r clinic operating a pharmacy (Langabeer 2005).

The sale of pharmaceuticals and the savings achieved with in-patient drug supplies due to larger bulk purchases, on the other hand, can be financial assets to the facility as long as costs are maintained at a reasonable level (Langabeer 2005). These are among the primary considerations that hospital and clinic administrators, board members, and other financially involved owners and officers of the medical facility must take into.