Summary
In today’s episode of the LogicStreaming Podcast, host Patrick Yoder, CEO and co-founder of LogicStream Health, talks about a major problem in healthcare today – drug shortages – and a new technology solution for managing them.
The Drug Shortage Impact
Drug shortages consume one to five percent of a hospital’s total annual drug budget. They also take a huge toll on pharmacists’ productivity and pose risks to patient safety.
As Yoder explains, when pharmacists spend five to 10 hours per drug shortage and tackle eight to 10 of them per week, that’s time they’re not spending on medication recommendations to improve patient care.
When hospitals can’t get critical medications, they must turn to alternatives, including drugs that are less familiar to doctors and nurses, causing increased chance of mistakes. Those alternatives are often more expensive, further driving up medication spending to astronomical levels.
A New Solution to Drug Shortage Management
As a pharmacist and entrepreneur, Yoder and his team listened to customers and designed a solution: The Drug Shortage App from LogicStream Health™. The app helps hospital systems combat the ongoing drug shortage epidemic to reduce risk to patients, control medication spend and increase staff productivity.
Early identification as well as assessment and management of drug shortages is a significant of the app. This insight allows users to pursue suitable alternatives – before availability dries up or prices escalate further. The app’s insights into who is ordering, dispensing and administering, and under what conditions, helps pharmacists better manage the demand side, too, to help stretch existing supplies as far as possible.
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