Article Text
Abstract
Background and Importance At our Antiblastic Drugs Unit (ADU), pharmacy staff fulfil requests from three hospitals. From October 2021 to March 2022, oncological preparations were frequently returned unused. In some cases, the preparations could be reused, but many others were disposed of. In order to reduce waste and improve efficiency, the costs were quantified in terms of economic value as dedicated time and sharing results with prescribers.
Aim and Objectives This work evaluated how pharmacist-doctor collaboration could reduce waste and optimise the process of setting up oncological therapies
Material and Methods An Excel file recorded the returns, quantified the cost of the therapies disposed of and the therapies recovered before and after the collaboration with prescribers, with whom it was agreed to give double confirmation before setting up therapies that are costly and/or have short chemical-physical stability.
Results Between 1 October 2021 and 31 March 2022, out of 13,008 therapies set up, 210 (1.6%) were returned, for an economic value of €96,192. Of these, 141 (67.14%) were reassigned to other patients and thus €58,926 were recovered, but 69 of them (32.86%) were disposed of, thus wasting €37,266. The time dedicated by the ADU staff was 28 hours (8 minutes for each preparation). After implementing a collaboration with clinicians (April to May 2022) only 43 therapies were returned, on average 21.5 per month for an economic value of €18,661. Of these, 33 (76.7%) were reused, recovering €12,989 and 10 of them (23.25%) were disposed of, wasting €5,672.
Conclusion and Relevance Hospital pharmacists tracked cancelled therapies and communicated these findings to prescribing physicians. By implementing corrective measures, this collaboration proved successful in optimising the use of resources and for further improvement of traceability, a special return form will be made.
Conflict of Interest No conflict of interest