Journal de Pharmacie Clinique
MENUIs your turnaround time fast enough? Implementing a lean project in hospital pharmacy to reduce prescription preparation time Volume 36, issue 2, Juin 2017
- Key words: pharmacy, hospital, lean, visual management, cell production
- DOI : 10.1684/jpc.2017.0355
- Page(s) : 89-95
- Published in: 2017
Hospital Montfort has doubled its size in the past years and this has had an enormous impact on the number of new orders received in pharmacy. Our department was having difficulty to cope with this increased workload and sending new medication to the nursing units in a timely fashion. The pharmacy team used a lean initiative to improve its turnaround time for a new order. Using some key principles, the pharmacy staff at Hospital Montfort were able to rapidly decrease its turnaround time for a new prescription by 47% from an average of 2:08h to 1:21h. The implication of staff in this project also helped decrease the overtime by 69%. It seems like this relatively innovative approach in Canada provides results and was useful in building a stronger team.