Pharma Helps Pharmacists
As part of their Value-Based Healthcare proposition a pharmaceutical company in the Netherlands approached Vintura to design a program to support outpatient pharmacies. The program supports pharmacists to improve services and organization. This is important as more and more patients rely on these (often newly established) healthcare providers in delivering specialized therapies. The aim of the program is to enable pharmacists to learn from each other in areas like delivery to patients that are being discharged, improving collaboration with specialists, optimizing logistics or developing activities to increase the number of customers.
Value-Chain Analysis
The first step was to develop a value-chain model for the analysis of their pharmacies’ management. This generated a number of performance indicators, which the participants could then use to assess their current strengths and possible areas for improvement.The project is growing gradually (after a pilot) in volume of participants. At this moment there are seven participating pharmacists (summer 2016).
The group uses the value model Vintura developed to explore best-practices amongst each other. The indicators in the model provide a neutral and comparison between pharmacists. It enables the pharmacists to learn from each other. Vintura facilitates the learning program by organizing regular work sessions amongst participants.
Successful Pilot
The model proved a great success, with pharmacists now able to identify specific organizational improvement areas, learn from other pharmacists and so optimize their performance. Pharmacists identified improvement potential in many areas, such as:
- Broadening their services and delivery of discharge medication to patients, at their bedside.
- Increasing the market share and patients serviced by exchanging valuable insights.Enhancing the quality control process to enable a continuous learning cycle.
- Strengthening the position and cooperation with hospital medical specialists.
Participants were very positive about the approach. Every pharmacy identified huge improvement potential. The client is now building upon it to support a larger group of pharmacists.
