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From Dock to Doc: Supply Chain Sees Gains at New Campus

It takes a ton of materials to run a healthcare system. Making sure that those supplies, equipment and other goods are procured and delivered at the right time is the role of Supply Chain Management.

Trinity Health’s Supply Chain team appears to have as much longevity and experience as they have storage units. “Our mission is to deliver the highest value in supplies and equipment to support patient care,” said Carol Walth, who brings 36 years of experience to the Supply Chain mission, 17 years as director.

With Trinity Health poised to open its new healthcare campus next spring, Walth says her team sees an opportunity to achieve new heights of efficiency and effectiveness.

“A major change is that our warehouse will be on site; that’s going to be huge,” she said. “Par levels and deliveries will be able to occur in a more timely manner. There won’t be as many STAT calls or delays. Now, if a department needs something from the warehouse it might take 15 to 20 minutes to get it there. At the new campus, we’ll be right on site.”

Supply Chain Management will be located on the first floor-rear of the new hospital, perfectly positioned next to Central Processing, where medical/surgical instruments are cleaned, processed, stored and dispensed for patient care. “It’ll be a one-stop shop for the instrumentation,” Walth added.

Another advantage will be better vendor access. “We’ll have better communication between our buyers here in the department and hospital staff,” she said. “They’ll be able to come and look at whatever we’re ordering instead of us trying to describe something over the phone.”

A major improvement at the new campus will be multiple docks for unloading trucks. “Currently we have just a single dock; the new hospital will have four,” Walth noted. “Two will be recessed so a semi truck can back up to the bay and be even with the dock. Another will be raised to accommodate box trucks, and a fourth will be ground level to allow miscellaneous trucks, such as the type  Nutrition Services uses, to pull in and offload from the side.”

Multiple docks will help to eliminate wait time since more than one vendor can  be accommodated at the same time. And trucks won’t have to show up as early in the day. In addition to the four main docks, garbage and waste will be dispatched via a separate dock.

Trinity’s Supply Chain team looks forward to enhancing its role regarding wastage reduction, maintaining inventory and preventing medical supplies from expiring in storage. The plan is to adopt a new system for maintaining PAR levels. PAR, which stands for periodic automatic replacement, is an inventory control system that tells a department what levels of inventory it should have in stock in  order to fulfill demand. This is especially important in healthcare.

“We’re changing the PAR level,” Walth explained. “It’ll still be a PAR level, but we’ve gone to what they call a Kanban or a two-bin system. Instead of having to count everything daily, the PAR level of each item will be split into two bins. If the front bin is empty, staff will place it on the top shelf in their PAR room. We will pull the bin, replenish it, and move the back one to the front. It should save time and should also facilitate the rotation of supplies.”

And when medical professionals have all the supplies they require, they provide better, more efficient patient care.

Trinity Hospital’s New Pharmacies: Welcome to the Neighborhood!

In early Americana, pharmacies and drug stores played a critical role in the life of every town. Even today, you can find a Walgreen’s on every corner in most metropolitan areas. The new Trinity Hospital will have two pharmacies when it opens, playing a critical role in the convenience and wellbeing of our patients.

The inpatient pharmacy is in the Acute Care Tower on the hospital’s south side. This is where drugs are stored and dispensed to other areas of the hospital and community clinics for administration to patients by healthcare providers. As a back of house function, it is not open to the public, so unless you work there, you will never see it.

Design and layout of the inpatient pharmacy includes a centralized area that will house mixing rooms, three of which are dedicated to IV meds. The mixing rooms are designed as Positive and Negative Pressure Rooms to prevent contamination and cross-contamination of medications. To maintain precise sterile conditions, pharmacists gown up in an ante room before entering the mixing room where HEPA filters monitor and control air flow. To maintain long term cleanliness and sterile conditions, these rooms are inspected and recertified every six months.

“The certification process ensures compliance with regulations, which ultimately sustains high quality of care for the patients we serve,” says Carolyn Seehafer, director of pharmacy at Trinity Hospital.

Medications manufactured in the inpatient pharmacy are sent to corresponding departments and medical staff by a highly technological tube delivery system.

For pre-dosed medications, such as a 100 or 200 milligram tablet of Celebrex, for example, a large carousel holds hundreds of bins that store medications by way of a barcode/UPC code. A pharmacist or pharmacy tech enters the name of the drug on a monitor which activates the carousel to rotate to the correct shelf and bin for removal of the medication. Medications are loaded into Pyxis machines and tracked by ways of the established barcode to ensure there are no errors in delivery. Inventory reports are generated daily to ensure meds are replenished in a timely manner.

“Centralizing inpatient pharmacy responsibilities and upgrading to state-of-the-art technology creates efficiencies that translate into fewer mistakes, shorter delivery times and better patient care,” said Dave Kohlman, vice president of Facilities.

However, not everything is centralized in the inpatient pharmacy. Consultant pharmacists are found on designated floors and work side-by-side with providers on drug regimens for patient care. They perform medication regimen reviews based on a patient’s health history to evaluate the appropriateness, safety, benefits, risks and cost-effectiveness of medication therapy. The consultant pharmacist may provide alternate treatment options, as well as medication management guidance including drug monitoring, documentation, administration and storage.

As the transition from the current to the new hospital evolves, the inpatient pharmacy will load all its inventory into the new site, as well as maintain the 50 Pyxis machines that auto dispense medication in various units. Larger store rooms will allow Trinity to maintain a larger inventory, better pricing and quicker turnarounds for medication requests.

Retail Pharmacy

Trinity’s outpatient/retail pharmacy is a new addition to the locations it currently operates. It is open to the public and will be located near the first-floor elevators on the north side of the new medical office building. For additional ease, the pharmacy is accessible from both the front and back doors of the building. Better yet, the drive through kiosk is located right off 37th Avenue SW, so you don’t even need to leave your vehicle!

The interior design provides more retail space, a larger waiting area and seating. However, soon-to-be discharged hospital patients are assisted by Trinity’s Meds4U Program, a free service that offers education about medication and delivers prescriptions and over the counter medications to patients before they leave the hospital. This service helps prevent medication interruptions and the inconvenience of another stop (or long wait) before going home.

Whether at the counter or drive through, Trinity Health Outpatient Pharmacy will be ready to serve patients in a fresh, white, bright and light environment. Soon enough, it will become your preferred neighborhood pharmacy.

“Our location in the medical building places the pharmacy in a key location that is either on your way to or from an appointment. We will be available to fill prescriptions as patients leave their providers’ office, or at the drive through kiosk when they need a quick refill,” said Loralee Feininger, director of retail pharmacy. “We look forward to seeing both new and familiar faces in our new location!”

Despite the behind-the-scenes activity in these busy hubs, Trinity’s pharmacies operate like an undertow: a constant, rhythmic current, barely noticeable on the periphery of our consciousness. And yet, they serve as an essential contributor to the ebb and flow of an individual’s healthcare management.