Consultant evaluation of a hospital medication system: synthesis of a new system.

Recommendations of consultants for the implementation of a new medication system at a large teaching hospital are described. Based on a previous analysis of the hospital's existing drug distribution and control system that revealed problems in reliability and response time, an interdisciplinary consultant group offered 14 recommendations, which included implementation of a computerized unit dose delivery system and selected clinical pharmacy services. Functions identified for which computerization would produce the greatest benefits included maintenance of patient census data, medication order entry and retrieval, and preparation of a medication administration record for nursing. Recommendations for improving the unit dose system in the hospital consisted of increasing the number of medications packaged in true unit dose form, increasing the frequency of daily deliveries of scheduled medications, sending p.r.n. medications on an on-call basis, decreasing the lead time for preparation of i.v. solutions, and using a pharmacist-manned portable medication cart to reduce workload on the central pharmacy during peak workload periods. Clinical pharmacy services identified as having the greatest cost-benefit ratio were discharge consults, drug therapy monitoring, and drug-use review. Using information from published studies and cost data from the hospital, a net annual savings of over +152,000 was projected with implementation of these services. Improvements in the unit dose system and implementation of clinical pharmacy services were expected to result in substantial cost savings in the study hospital.