A regional hospital in New Zealand faced a major challenge when a new financial management information system (FMIS) was introduced nationwide. The hospital had to adapt its core systems, including some critical legacy systems, to integrate with the new FMIS. One of these legacy systems was responsible for the ordering and distribution of pharmaceutical drugs, which is vital for the hospital's operations and patient care.
The situation was complex and risky. The workflow between finance and the pharmacy was undocumented and had many manual workarounds for ordering processes that should have been automated. The ordering process and record keeping was disjointed from a financial perspective as well. The FMIS and pharmacy systems needed to be manually reconciled, which was time-consuming and error-prone. All of these existing processes needed to be redesigned, tested and deployed within five months.
Our task was to change the relationship between the pharmacy system and the pharmacy's suppliers, so that the FMIS system was the system of record. The FMIS would control the ordering for the pharmacy, and account for many variations in order scenarios, such as one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one, and staged ordering volumes. The FMIS would also align the master data for products, details, pricing, and vendors.
Our most important action for was to partner with the Pharmacy to understand their business requirements and facilitate achieving these with the new FMIS. There were many, equally important stakeholders to consider in these integrations - drug suppliers, the Pharmacy's software vendor, the FMIS vendor, and clinical staff to whom drugs were dispensed to.
We supplied the Project Management and Business Analysis resource and expertise, to:
Document the pharmacy's processes and workflows to ensure no loss in functionality
Measure the pharmacy process and workflow performance and identify areas for improvement
Design a system architecture and interdependent integrations to support workflow requirements
Develop new integrations to facilitate orders between the pharmacy, FMIS, vendor, and back again.
Develop fail-safes and 'offline' processes so the pharmacy could operate during system outages
Rigorously test the pharmacy's drug ordering and reporting outcomes
Deploy the integrations with confidence with rollback plans in place
Support new business-as-usual operations and troubleshoot undocumented edge cases
The result was a successful end-to-end automation of the pharmacy ordering process for all drug types, including critical custom drugs for patients, such as chemotherapy. The hospital also gained:
Automated system reconciliation and reporting, which improved the accuracy and timeliness of financial information
Reduced manual drug ordering and administration tasks, which freed up staff time and resources for other activities
Enhanced monitoring and evaluation of critical pharmacy process performance, which enabled evidence-based decision making and policy formulation, as well as feedback and learnings.
This project demonstrates Pro Partner's ability to how identify and evaluate business, and carefully reengineer workflow to improve patient outcomes in the health sector. The performance uplift for these critical systems was achieved quickly and safely, enabling critical hospital services to continue.
"I felt Chris was very approachable. After some calls he would touch base to see how we were feeling and was responsive in coming to visit the pharmacy to understand the challenges and frustrations on our end. We felt listened to and supported by Chris and his team during this implementation."
Rachel Hooker, Pharmacy Manager
"Chris and Yemane were thorough with documenting each stage in the project via shared documents. This was particularly helpful for me when we had a run through prior to go live as I had numerous steps to change in our live system.
I really appreciated the support Chris gave me through out this project being the first time I had ever done something to this scale."
Amanda Rich, Delivery Manager and Technician
We provided customised and integrated solutions for the health sector, and can help you achieve uplift in your businesses critical system operations. We understand the urgency and care that is demanded of businesses with critical infrastructure and essential services.
If you are interested in learning about the methodology we applied to this project, you can download our DIY Project Management model, here.
If your team is missing the resource and/or expertise for your I.T Project, book a friendly meeting now. We will discuss the vision for your project and how Pro Partner can scale to best serve your business requirements. We'd love to help you achieve your I.T Project's outcomes, too.
Sincerely,
Chris
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