Improving pharmacy operations through simulation

The pharmacy plays a very critical role in the overall patient treatment process. Leveraging the patients with the right drug, right dose, at the right time is one of the prime metrics to measure the quality of pharmacy services. Therefore, this research endeavor is focused on studying and streamlining the pharmacy operations and subsequently eliminating non-value added medication delivery activities within a pharmacy system. Furthermore, this study should also help the pharmacies in optimizing their activities from both the macro and micro levels and consequently providing care more efficiently and effectively. Discrete events simulation has been used as a tool to achieve the forementioned study objectives. Based on the results of a baseline simulation model, two scenarios were investigated. The results of the simulation model for the two alternate scenarios showed a reduction of 45.5% and 36.21% in turn around time (TAT), respectively.