JUST A QUESTION FOR ALL OF YOU. ANY ONE HAVE A CLUE WHAT THE NATIONAL AVERAGE IS FOR PHARMACY TURNS ARE?
MY DIRECTOR THINKS THAT THE AVERAGE SHOULD BE AROUND 20. I THINK THAT THIS IS TO HIGH. PRESENTLY MY ARE AT 17.

At 17 turns I would say you are doing well
I found an article that states the average annual turns to be 10.25. I'm not sure how old the data is in the article. www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3705/is_199501/ai_n8716970/pg_3

Above is the article I found in case your director wants to take a look at it.

Name of Facility: 200

City, State: Community Hospital Catholic Healthsystem

Years as a Buyer: 25

Here's another web site that states average turn over
www.mm-consultants.com/pharmacy.html

Name of Facility: 200

City, State: Community Hospital Catholic Healthsystem

Years as a Buyer: 25

BETH- YOUR THE GREATEST. THANKS FOR ALL YOUR HELP!

Name of Facility: 550

City, State: TEACHING

Years as a Buyer: 8 AS A BUYER 23 YEARS IN PHARMACY

What a timely question and some great answers. Thank you. I have an Information Technology and Air Force Medical Logistics background. I have gone through a lot in just six months but the Average Turns question and links was very helpful.
I am a new Pharmacy Buyer in a newly created position. I can appreciate the content within most of the questions and answers in this Forum.
Any ideas on dealing with the Techs, supply chain and cost containment, please email me at: cloya@wtbyhosp.org - had a good time at the conference!
Charley

Name of Facility: 175

City, State: Acute Care

Years as a Buyer: Six Months!!!

Hi Charley,
Always happy to welcome a new buyer to the forum.
Feel free to post any questions you might have on this forum. We've here to help each other and learn from each other. Most of us remember what it was like to show up for work one day and find out that we had just been promoted to buyer or that the director had just decided he needed a full time purchasing position. I wish this forum had existed when I was first starting as a buyer...of course I go back to the days when we had to purchase everything direct from the companies and we purchased very little from the wholesalers.

Name of Facility: 200

City, State: Community Hospital Catholic Healthsystem

Years as a Buyer: 25

Charley asked about cost containment and this is an everyday effort. I was hired on here 3 years ago with out any Pharmacy knowledge and a boat load of business buying knowledge. Over the past 3 years, I have put together spreadsheets that keep track of all the cost savings we acheive every year. We keep track of such things as medication cost reductions (new generics, looking at all medications in a class to determine the cost effectiveness), opportunity purchases to buy medications at a discount thru such programs as the Cardinal Scratch & Dent program, rebates and making sure we are maximizing these opportunities, inocrrectly invoiced items, Guaranteed supply contracts and submitting paperwork for those items that we can get back the difference between our current vendor and one that is more expensive (these vary by GPO), free goods (such as Baxa Bucks), incorrectly invoiced items (to make sure we get the appropriate credit).

I also look at our pars in the Omnicell system to try to reduce what we maintain in the Omnicells. I do this with a spreadsheet that I then go over with the department director over that Omnicell area. This has been effect at reducing the amount of inventory on hand.

Our turns are right at 13.

Hope this helps.
Kathy

Name of Facility: St. Francis Health Center, Topeka, KS 330beds

Years as a Buyer: 3 in health care/25+ retail hard goods