Benefit areas explored in this section
- Impact on drug spend and income revenue
Measuring benefits in finance
Here’s what our network members had to say when questioned about how they were looking to measure financial benefits:
Baseline drug expenditure and monitor post-implementation
e.g. total drug expenditure, in tariff drug expenditure
Real-time data reporting
can reduce medicines spend by pharmacists being able to make timely interventions. i.e. when a high-cost medicine is prescribed inappropriately, the pharmacist could be alerted and could intervene before administered
Auditing historical data
and using the audit tool in ePMA for the future data e.g. formulary prescribing, high-cost drugs’
Audits improve the insights
The impact of particular prescribing on patient outcomes, for example, changing to different medication earlier that may have reduced illness costs for the Trust and provide a better experience for the patient by providing a quicker path to wellness; or reviewing prescribing habits to understand any poor practice and financial implications that could be changed and potentially reduce costs.
Consider the cost of safety incidents, risks and litigation
These can then be financially quantified within a business case, these could be productivity releasing benefits or cash releasing benefits. Examples could include costs of extra patient bed day stays, greater clinician time spent with patients and family, staff time investigating incidents etc.
Consider the financial implication for the patients and family
i.e. costs to them of travelling to hospitals or days not working
Can include time saving regarding scenario
of a pharmacist wasting time on the phone trying to get previous information about a patient’s prescriptions