Using Value Capture principles, staff redesigned the medication process at Wellmont Holston Valley saving millions of dollars and dramatically reducing waste.
Staff at Wellmont Holston Valley Medical Center in Kingsport, TN wanted to improve their medication use process. With Value Capture teaching, they reduced stock-outs by 81% and reduced medication inventory purchasing by more than $1.3 million. This $1.3 million savings in the first year was achieved by reducing the gap between purchases and actual consumption by patients – an important discipline Value Capture teaches that can produce increased safety and dramatic reductions in waste across the enterprise.
These savings were only part of the total story. Creating less wasteful inventory meant that fewer drugs expired on the hospital’s shelves or had to be sent back to the manufacturer – high expenses for most hospitals. And time was saved across the organization, from the ordering process itself to the endless “rework” occasioned by the need to look for and then reorder and reprocess medications that patients were missing.
