I apologize for the dumb question... I'm a newbie. What are turns?

Name of Facility: Catawba Valley Medical Center - 270 beds

City, State: Teaching

Years as a Buyer: Less than 1!!!

Coleen:

I'm surprised no one took this one. I guess it's too early in the week.

"Turns" is a short term for Inventory Turnovers. It is the number of times you've completely rotated your stock in a year. There are several ways to determine turnovers, but the simplest method is to take your total expenditures for the year and divide it by the current dollar amount of inventory in stock now. For example, if you spent $1,000,000 in drugs and materials, and you have on hand right now $100,000 in stock, your turns would be 10 (1,000,000/100,000). The higher the turns, the better it looks for you, as there is not stock just sitting on the shelves, not generating revenue.

That is what has generated the current discussion on whether or not to deplete your current stock just before inventory. By decreasing your stock, you artificially inflate your inventory turns, and you loook that much better.

Hope that answers your question

Name of Facility: Kennedy Health System / 180

City, State: http://www.pharmacypurchasing.com

Years as a Buyer: >30 but Retired (for now...)

Gotcha - thanks! No one at my hospital has mentioned turns to me as a goal to move towards, maybe its not on their radar...

Name of Facility: Catawba Valley Medical Center - 270 beds

City, State: Teaching

Years as a Buyer: Less than 1!!!

Since you're less than a year into the job, maybe it isn't an issue they want you to address - just yet. Rest assured, if you have an accounting department in your hospital, it WILL be an issue eventually.

My advice is to look at your GPO's contract compliance numbers for your facility. Unfortunately, contract compliance includes all your expendiutres, including non-contract proprietary drugs like Lunesta or Activase, as well as your IVIG and other high-dollar items. Because of these non-contract items you have to buy, getting your contract compliance numbers close to 100% to next to impossible. If it is 70% or better, you're doing as best a job as you can.

Next, look at your drugs that are in great quantity and are also expiring. Large quantities of expiring drugs should tell you that these items are slow-movers and should be downsized in quantities, with exception of course to drugs you must keep on hand despite their low use, like Dantrium.

Lastly, just before inventory, get all your out-dated drugs off the shelves and do whatever your hospital does to return them: either a reverse-distributor company or if you do it yourself, the latter I really don't recommend, because of the time and documentation it would invlove.

These easy quick-fixes help you keep your eye on the bottom line, so that when inventory time comes around, it won't be a source of major trauma if you have to return large quantites of drugs for either out-dates or just plain excessive stock.

Mike

Name of Facility: Kennedy Health System / 180

City, State: http://www.pharmacypurchasing.com

Years as a Buyer: >30 but Retired (for now...)

Here at the hospital we went threw a lean system also.
We went to the 2 bin system, in the front bin should
be a 2 wk supply in the back been also carries a 2 wk
supply. It does make it better on the ordering. Our problem is they techs or pharmacists do not seem to know how to pull the empty bins also. At first we
ran out a lot because our monthly average use was like
5 tabs on some products. Well if you fill pyxis machines you can have a few months sitting up in these
machines. I try to manage the top dollar meds, and unload them asap after the patient is discharged.

Name of Facility: 400+

City, State: Univeristy and Teaching Hospital

Years as a Buyer: 13