Pharmacy Drug Spend Optimization
$125,000 Award
Project Overview
Our project is to create a website-based application to reduce spend on pharmacy medications using a forecasting model to predict more cost-effective future purchases. We hope to achieve approximately $2M in total savings across the hospital system.
Project Team
- Joshua Denford, CPhT, Ambulatory Pharmacy
- Kathy Vranek, PharmD, Ambulatory Pharmacy
- Michael McGrath, Enterprise Data and Analytics
- Warren D’Souza, PhD, Enterprise Data and Analytics
- Rajas Gokhale, Enterprise Data and Analytics
June 2022 Updates
Our team rolled out the app to 1/5 retail pharmacies in a pilot for July 2022. We should be ready to implement all 5 pharmacies in October. The UMMC inpatient app pilot is scheduled for October.
Our goal is to have all of UMMS using this tool as soon as possible.
Project Outcomes
The team has successfully developed two algorithms in a website-based application for use by pharmacy purchasers to significantly reduce drug spend. One algorithm for retail purchases and a second for inpatient purchases.
Both algorithm are available on the website for all UMMS pharmacies. Currently the retail algorithm generates $2.5M in savings annually and the inpatient algorithm generates $1.75M in savings.
Of the $4.25M currently possible, more than $2M is expected due to non-usage of the app, drug shortages, and patient/provider drug preference.
The team plans to also develop a cost savings analysis on the website that will track actual vs. predicted cost savings over time. UMMS pharmacy staff have been instrumental in the success of this initiative as they continue to use the app successfully.