SPD2 – The waste-reducing hospital pharmacy – Let’s get started!

Linked to EAHP Statements

Section 1 – Introductory Statements and Governance: Statements 1.1, 1.3, 1.4,
Section 2 – Selection, Procurement and Distribution: Statement 2.6

ACPE UAN: 0475-0000-22-008-L04-P. A knowledge-based activity.

Abstract

In its 2017 report, “Tackling wasteful spending on health”, the OECD systematically analysed and described how and why a considerable amount of health spending was deemed wasted. In this context, “wasteful” refers to first, services or processes that are either harmful or do not deliver benefits, and second, costs that could be avoided. Examples of waste in health care are manifold and substantially occur in the three domains of clinical care (e.g. duplicating therapies, preventable clinical adverse events, overprescribing), operations (e.g. discarded medicines) and governance.

Not surprisingly, waste-reducing activities referring to medicines are in the focus of community and hospital pharmacists alike, as medication waste occurs at all stages of the pharmaceutical supply chain.

It is important to understand factors contributing to medication waste and learn about initiatives to address these sources of waste, in order to mitigate the financial and environmental impact of them.

While hospital pharmacists reduce waste in the above-mentioned meaning in clinical care by providing clinical pharmacy services and cost-efficient selection of medicines, other areas of hospital pharmacy practice contributing to waste are not that well explored.

This seminar will give an introduction in the concept of waste from a pharmacy viewpoint and then provide two different examples of how waste can be reduced, one in the original sense of “waste” and the second focused on waste in pharmacy and clinical pharmacy processes.

Learning objectives
After the session, participants should be able to:

• State various sources of waste generally in health care and specifically in hospital pharmacy
• Recall waste-reducing examples in the hospital pharmacy setting

Educational need addressed
The ever-increasing awareness among health care professionals that resources being precious and often limited is driving the need for waste-reducing activities. Hospital pharmacists have to know how to contribute and save resources within their scope of practice.

Keywords: Waste, supply chain, clinical pharmacy processes, lean management