Background In the University Hospital Basel (UHB) as well as in many other Swiss hospitals the ward pharmacies are managed by nursing teams according to a survey conducted by the Swiss Association of Public Health Administration and Hospital Pharmacists (GSASA). The logistical process of drug delivery is not the primary goal of the nurses. Therefore it was discussed whether the management of the ward pharmacies could be replaced by a team from the hospital pharmacy.

Purpose It was the aim of the study to create a leaner and more efficient process. Mainly the expenditure of time by the nursing and the pharmacy teams was assessed. Furthermore, we wanted to analyse the financial impact.

Material and methods The introduced ward pharmacy service included the optimisation of the drug dispensary once in the beginning, the order of the drugs and finally the stock placement after the delivery four times a week, as well as the control of the expiry dates once a month. After the introduction of the service in four different wards at the UHB, a financial evaluation was done using our ERP system SAP. Additionally we registered the required time with or without the ward pharmacy service.

Results The ward pharmacy management by the hospital pharmacy clearly reduced the effort by the nursing team by 5 hours per week (reduction for order of 58%, for stock placement of 85% and for the expiry date control of 100%). On the other side, the same time had to be invested by the pharmacy team. We could also achieve substantial cost savings with the reduction in the drug dispensary value by about 5’600 CHF (€4’900) , of the sales volume between 4% and 54%, as well as of the number of packages between 14% and 19%.

Conclusion The ward pharmacy management by pharmaceutical staff was a big success, which resulted in a very positive feedback by the nursing team and in a substantial financial benefit. In the future a further expansion of the service is planned.

References and/or Acknowledgements A special thanks goes to the pharmacy and the nursing teams in the UHB.

No conflict of interest