Salinas Valley Automates Med Restocking for ADCs

A 269-bed acute care facility in California, Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital faced a series of challenges in restocking anesthesia medications. A night-shift technician would push a cart full of drugs around to each OR and then manually check the anesthesia station drawers.

There are MiniDrawers for controlled substances and two half-height matrix drawers for uncontrolled drugs in each workstation. “This process was time-consuming and, as a DOP, didn’t leave me with a lot of confidence that we caught all the potential problems such as expired drugs,” said Director of Pharmacy Michael Brown. Dr. Brown added, “Because of the time it took to restock the stations, we could only do it once a day, typically in the late evening, which resulted in frequent stock-outs. In addition, it was challenging from a staffing perspective because we have fewer techs working on the evening shift and they are more highly compensated than our day shift technicians. As a result, we were spending more money and couldn’t have PM shift technicians working on other projects that more directly helped improve patient care.”

Download the latest information about our suite of medication intelligence products by using the button below.