Inventory management in the healthcare sector has been a long-standing pain point of most healthcare organizations and pharmacies. Healthcare providers must safeguard the integrity and preserve accurate records to maintain compliance protocols. Through automation and analysis tools for healthcare providers, pharmacy inventory management systems can track and dispense prescriptions in a streamlined fashion and with high-security protocols. This is executed through features, such as automated filling of prescriptions, segmented workflows, IVR, etc.   

Customized, powerful, and efficient inventory management software for hospitals can easily handle the most complex situations, such as 340B virtual inventory management. It ensures that healthcare organizations can withstand audits from payers, 340B suppliers, and others through healthcare automation.  

OSP Solution – A Holistic Healthcare Inventory Management System  

A US-based client was looking to develop a complete management system that could combine data from different healthcare warehouses and generate easy-to-understand accumulation reports for 340B, WAC, and GPO accounts and savings reports that calculate the amount saved on each 340B drug.   

What We Offered:  

  • Easy to identify patient eligibility, with a customized 340B management system implemented through healthcare interoperability. The system is integrated with other databases that store the data of 340B eligible patients and restrict 340B drug usage to outpatients and individuals who meet the requirements of the existing patient classification.   
  • Compliant Inventory Management through HIPAA compliant solutions that maintain multiple inventory centers and can assimilate dispersed inventories into the pharmacy workflow, enhancing processes and creating efficiencies, and reducing costs and errors.   
  • Direct Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) interfaces allow direct electronic data exchange between the inventory and order management system and suppliers and intuitively download and access the updated directories of suppliers.  

Challenges with Traditional Inventory Management Systems for Hospitals

  • Complex Process for Patient Eligibility: Difficulty in identifying patients eligible for programs creates a hurdle in inventory management.   
  • Inefficient Management Systems: Inefficient and outdated pharmacy systems make it challenging to manage inventory and create a vulnerability to errors.  
  • Changing Policies and Procedure: Keeping up with constantly updated changes in policies and procedures in real-time is manually unmanageable.  
  • Auditing Difficulties: Difficulty in managing audits is owed to traditional legacy systems that do not offer innovative and automated processes.   
  • Dispensing and Replenishment Complexities: Outdated systems make it challenging to track dispensing and replenishing of medicines, thereby disrupting the smooth functioning of workflow.   
  • Traditional Reporting Challenges: Old and obsolete methods to report the performance of the 340B program have created consistent complexities.   

5 Features of a Futuristic Healthcare Inventory Management Solution

1. Real-time Prescription Data

A new-age healthcare inventory management software is designed and created in a fully automated manner, which will process and qualify prescription data in real-time and provide data analysis to ensure adherence to compliance through integrated healthcare solutions.   

Inventory management software for hospitals can also be customized to display the number of prescriptions dispensed by pharmacies and the medical costs daily, weekly, and monthly. The data collected in real-time can assist healthcare organizations in building a robust and effective workflow and playing a pivotal role in reducing the hurdles of practice management.   

Real-time data generation and tracking can meet end-to-end operational requirements to provide comprehensive pharmacy inventory systems. A tailor-made inventory management system is a fully installed, maintained solution that eliminates much of the cost and end-user maintenance for an enterprise pharmacy solution.   

2. Compliance

Choosing a hospital inventory management software that ensures compliance with comprehensive guidelines and practices is essential. This solution can be designed to maintain multiple inventory centres, through medical records management, by assimilating dispersed inventories into the pharmacy workflow and database.   

A robust pharmacy inventory management system can also be customized to support electronic health record interfaces, enabling a direct connection with related healthcare entities and instinctively access their updated directories and requirements.   

It can also be integrated with other healthcare management systems, such as auditing, reporting, supply chain, etc., for data exchange and identifying best practices to ensure compliance.  

3. Patient Identification

A team of experienced developers and engineers can assist in designing a pharmacy inventory management software that identifies patient eligibility of programs. A robust database system can be integrated with other databases where the data of eligible patients is stored through medical informatics.   

This feature will ensure that drugs obtained under the program are restricted to outpatient use and given to individuals who meet the requirements of the existing patient classification. When an individual applies for drugs, it can be designed to explain why that individual is eligible for the use of the drugs on an outpatient basis and display records that can establish compliance with program requirements through population health management.   

An empowering and user-friendly pharmacy inventory management software can simplify the process of medication dispensing, management of inventory, and sales-related processes.  

4. Auditing Capabilities

Healthcare organizations must look toward developing pharmacy management systems that cover all aspects of compliance and also provides an understanding of areas where performance can be enhanced and improved through healthcare analytics solutions.   

The medical supply inventory management software should focus on policies and procedures for comprehensiveness and uniformity and automatically update the changes to any policy and guideline.   

Automation techniques in medical inventory management software are deployed toward efficient inventory management by incorporating barcodes that meet compliance requirements. Inventory processes are infused with efficiency through process-flow automation of stocking, numerical balances, monitoring, and tracking, warehouse stock manifests, and dispensing updates.  

5. Supply Chain Management

Medical inventory management systems can be designed and developed based on predictive analysis to create competencies through hospital supply chain optimization. Medical inventory management solutions use a combination of patient and clinical data that enable hospitals to predict the probability of inevitable consequences through cloud computing in healthcare.    

Medical supply inventory management eventually provides more personalized care to patients through patient engagement systems. Integrating and automating pharmacy operations offers real-time visibility into inventory purchasing, like classifying medicine quantities across locations and forestalling upcoming shortages.   

Automation will also improve and enhance processes and create efficiencies, eradicating burdensome inventory management responsibilities resulting in high costs and human errors. The entire process of managing inventory is accelerated and increased in terms of productivity.    

Benefits of a Robust Healthcare Inventory Management Software

  • An automated reporting system offers a customized structure to educate and update health entities toward performance and augment intelligent decision-making.  
  • A reporting component allows drugstores and employees access to all the necessary reports about inventory replenishment, claims, cash flow summary, accounting, etc.  
  • Medical supply inventory management ensures better and transparent communication, improving accuracy, productivity, and timeliness.   
  • Overall operations are streamlined and empowered with efficiency through a hospital inventory management system that increases profit margins through HIPAA compliance and regulations.   
  • Healthcare inventory management solutions increase overall revenue generation through a systemized experience that addresses personalized requirements of all health entities.  
  • Pharmacy management systems can provide detailed information about the medicines available at a store to help healthcare providers offer better service to their patients.   
  • Eligible patients can use the healthcare inventory management software to be directed to the nearest pharmacy with the medicines in stock, saving them the time and effort required to travel long distances.   
  • With the help of data categorization and individual barcodes, healthcare organizations can efficiently manage dispensing and replenishment of medicines in real-time.   
  • Healthcare inventory management software can carry third-party payer information and allow the pharmacy to monitor key performance indicators, along with EHR integration for updated data.   

Conclusion

Healthcare organizations are continually looking toward deploying technological advancements to streamline processes and increase profitability. Healthcare inventory management software provides automation toward operational efficiencies and solving auditing challenges. Intuitive solutions can be applied to automate electronic savings at the medication dispensing stage, reduce patient costs, and increase medication accessibility and adherence. It also offers a comprehensive repository of claims information that includes insights and actionable information on the means to accelerate reimbursements among healthcare organizations. Finally, automation features instantly reduce time and resources spent on managing audits and offer flagging capabilities that minimize fraud and abuse, thus allowing complete compliance.  

OSP is a trusted healthcare software development company that delivers bespoke solutions as per your business needs. Connect with us to hire the best talents in the industry to build enterprise-grade software.

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