All PostsJune 2024
CPS pharmacy management client, Fulton State Hospital (FSH), was recognized with the State of Missouri Governor’s Award for Quality & Productivity (GAQP) on June 12, 2024. FSH’s multi-year Six Sigma Robust Process Improvement (RPI) project took first place in the GAQP’s Efficiency & Process Improvement category. Of the recognized project leaders, two were from CPS: Victoria Jenne, PharmD, BCPS and Joshua Wood, PharmD.
The FSH team created an efficient medication delivery and reconciliation process that improved their efficiencies and effectiveness of dosing. Given FSH’s success with this award-winning project, two additional State of Missouri facilities have already adopted this technology and began working toward a more streamlined process in their own hospitals.
Fulton State Hospital's Project: Improving Medication Process Efficiency
FSH’s project involved a complete overhaul of the hospital’s medication process from acquisition and distribution to reconciliation and administration. In general, the medication process is cumbersome for any facility, but given FSH serves behavioral health patients who need incredibly complex treatment regimens, their operating procedure is particularly nuanced. Before the improvement project, this process was entirely manual. The labor-intensive, time-consuming nature of it led to operational inefficiencies and workarounds that could have led to medication error and contamination, job dissatisfaction, and a negative impact on patient care.
By bringing together change leaders from pharmacy and nursing departments, the project team aimed to simplify and standardize the medication process through technology. They decided to implement an automated multi-medication packager and electronic verification system to replace the manual process. However, getting this new technology was just the first feat. The project team also had to redesign all medication-related workflows, rewrite policies, establish standard operating procedures, and provide educational trainings.
Due to their efforts, FSH achieved astounding results. They significantly improved the overall quality and safety of the medication process while mitigating the possibility of error and contamination. As part of those improvements, the project team established more accurate and complete documentation methods, which strengthened FSH’s compliance with regulatory standards.
Eliminating the antiquated manual processes drove a substantial enhancement in operational efficiency. In the first year post-implementation, medication pass times decreased by 55% on average, and the associated set-up times decreased by an average 49%. These reductions allowed nurses to spend more time working to the highest level of their license in providing high-quality patient-centric care. During that same timeframe, nurses gained an additional 1.51 hours with their patients per day per assigned unit, which amounts to 190 hours across all units each week. This quality improvement is so important given nursing presence allows for more therapeutic interactions that ultimately improve patient satisfaction and care.
Congratulations to Victoria, Joshua, and the rest of the FSH project team!
Read more about the award-winning Fulton State Hospital (FSH) here: https://dmh.mo.gov/fulton-state-hospital
Learn more about the State of Missouri Governor’s Award for Quality & Productivity (GAQP) here: https://www.training.oa.mo.gov/erp/index.htm
If you are interested in a pharmacy management solution for your hospital or health system, please contact us today.
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