The health sector must be clear that the correct management of inventories is essential to improve customer service and progressively increase finances, since there are many factors to take into account in this area, since no inventory is being manipulated , we are working with drugs that are directly linked to the well-being of patients and mismanagement of these can lead to legal or monetary problems.
Medical inventories must be treated with the greatest delicacy, they must be constantly controlled by the expiration dates and the storage process, that is, they must be located in such a way that they can be found quickly, making use first of the drugs that are about to expire in order to increase the security and confidence that is given to the patient.
They must be stored in dry places and without much lighting, ensuring that each individual package or box is in optimal condition to be offered in hospitals, clinics or pharmacies.
In addition, when stipulating strategies for inventories, the current inventory quantity and the demand or consumption of said items by patients or end customers must be aligned. This helps clinics and hospitals to have less inventory near expiration and also reduces product shortages.
This strategy must be adapted to each drug distribution center, since the same amount of drugs will be sold or used in a large hospital as in a neighborhood pharmacy. In the same way, not all medications require constant refills, since some are more used than others.
Alert management must also be taken into account, that is, a list of possible substitutes for the drug should be kept in mind in case of shortage, as well as an assigned person who is in charge of making emergency orders in case if necessary.
All this sounds very simple in theory, but in practice it is a bit more tedious, since doing it mechanically would take a lot of time and would increase the risks of having expired or poorly stored drugs, this is why it is important that clinics, hospitals or pharmacies have an inventory management software where follow-ups are made through applications to the drugs that are about to expire or the possible substitution options are read in case of not providing said drug.
In the same way, through these management software you can have a traceability on all the characteristics of a drug that is applied to a certain patient, which helps to study different events that can happen in a clinic or hospital.