Shaping the Future of Pharmacy: Trends to Watch at ASHP Midyear 2024

Pharmacies and the medications they house are critical components of medical systems, but they face ongoing challenges, such as economic pressures, lack of transparency, and a variety of siloed systems installed that hinder the exchange of data. Medication errors are among the most common health care errors, affecting at least 1.5 million people every year and consuming critical resources.¹

The ASHP Midyear Clinical Meeting and Exhibition brings together the pharmacy community each year to share insights. Image Credit: © ASHP

To ensure efficient, cost-effective processes and a safe environment for patients and caregivers, it is essential to stay on top of innovations in medication management and pharmacy optimization. The clinical pharmacy meeting and exhibition American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) Midyear 2024, which will be held from December 8-12 in New Orleans, Louisiana, is a significant event for industry professionals to discuss key trends, including medication management, course-correcting supply chain management, regulatory compliance, and pharmacy optimization.²

This article will take a closer look at 3 trends that will be central topics at ASHP Midyear 2024 and the role these trends play in the future of health care.

Trend 1: Mitigating Supply Chain Shortages and Drug Diversion With Advanced Medication Management

As health care systems grow through mergers and acquisitions, they face increased complexity in managing supply chains. Issues such as supply chain shortages and drug diversion become more prominent, demanding more resources and time to manage and overcome them. One of the critical functions of hospital systems is managing their supply of key medications. Managing supply chains in complex systems is multifaceted, but it’s clear that many hospital systems struggle due to outdated and disintermediated systems that cause inefficiencies and limit visibility into key data.

To ensure medication availability, patient and caregiver safety, and to drive effective medication management, hospitals require tracking a wealth of information, including medication origin, ongoing lot number and expiration date management, current location, and administration data. These data are critical because it can directly feed medication management and operations, including managing supply, watching for possible diversion, and responding to recalls. However, many hospitals and health systems lack the infrastructure they need to gather and manage these data efficiently.

Compounding issues further, upstream problems, including medication shortages, further impact medical systems, patients, and the caregivers who serve them. Hospitals are estimated to spend close to $360 million annually managing drug shortages alone.³ If the last 5 years have taught us anything, it’s that shortages and complications in the pharmaceutical supply chain can have lasting impacts. Modern, interoperable medication management systems can offer a wide-angle view of inventory and usage trends. Technologies such as RFID (radio frequency identification) tagging enable detailed, real-time inventory management, helping hospital systems mitigate drug shortages through a variety of different mechanisms.

When the systems and the information they generate are integrated, they give pharmacy management insights into medication locations with increased granularity, thus providing a line of sight into the full lifecycle of medications. If there is a shortage, for example, staff could be empowered to identify locations of medications in short supply for careful monitoring and rationing.

Combined, these insights are used to power deep and rich analytics, identify medication shortages, waste, and diversion events, and can also better inform inventory purchasing decisions and trend forecasting.

Trend 2: Optimizing Pharmacies With Digital Transformation and the Power of Data

Pharmacy operations are the backbone of hospital systems, but years of experience have made it clear that optimizing pharmacy operations can be an uphill challenge. Medical staff often spend considerable time searching for medications and supplies, and pharmacy staff are burdened with manual processes prone to error. In the same way that medication management systems are central to managing drug shortages and supplies, leveraging, and integrating the data created and captured in the various systems used in pharmacies is central to optimizing pharmacy operations. Digitization, including operational dashboards, can streamline workflows and reduce errors.

Studies continue to show that medical staff in some hospital systems spend approximately an hour per shift just looking for the right medications and supplies.⁴ Pharmacy staff, specifically, are burdened with many manual processes that leave room for human error and take a toll on their workloads. Leveraging digitalization across the pharmacy, including through operational dashboards, can transform workflows and improve operational efficiency.

Investing in innovative technologies can reduce costs associated with errors and inefficiencies while driving benefits in ordering, pharmacy workflows, inventory management, and even recall management, saving nearly $100,000 per pharmacist per year.

Trend 3: Navigating Pharmacy-Health System Policy to Ensure Compliance and Safety

Regulatory requirements and standards set by professional organizations continue to shape pharmacy and medication management. Compliance is critical for patient and caregiver safety, but it requires coordination and alignment between regulators, medical systems, and industry. Partnerships with industry innovators must provide robust solutions that can empower compliance while improving processes and establishing new industry standards.

For example, the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA), launched to keep counterfeit, expired, or otherwise harmful drugs from reaching patients, requires the pharmaceutical industry to electronically track and trace drugs throughout their journey from manufacturer to patient. The original DSCSA compliance deadline of November 27th, 2024, has now been extended into 2025, giving manufacturers, distributors, and hospitals additional time to adopt the necessary technologies needed to comply.⁵ Effective partnerships, technologies, and collaborations can ensure faster and more cost-effective DSCSA compliance while setting the entire industry up for success well into the future. I am hopeful that through ongoing conversations and collaboration, these technologies can make the entire medication ecosystem safer, from manufacturing to pharmacies to the patients cared for.

Looking to Future Conversations

Events such as ASHP Midyear 2024 are crucial for fostering collaboration and innovation in the pharmacy field. By staying informed about key trends and engaging in industry discussions, medical professionals, pharmacy staff and management, system providers, and pharmaceutical manufacturers can work together to drive innovation and change to support improved protection for patients, caregivers, and pharmacies’ bottom line while driving positive change in health care.

REFERENCES

1. Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy. Medication errors. AMCP.org. July 18, 2019. Accessed December 4, 2024. https://www.amcp.org/concepts-managed-care-pharmacy/medication-errors

2. Midyear Clinical Meeting 2024 - ASHP. 2024. Accessed December 4, 2024. https://midyear.ashp.org/?loginreturnUrl=SSOCheckOnly&utm_term=&utm_campaign=Performance+Max-Recruitment-1-00-4801-60000&utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=ppc&hsa_acc=3985934627&hsa_cam=17288510113&hsa_grp=&hsa_ad=&hsa_src=x&hsa_tgt=&hsa_kw=&hsa_mt=&hsa_net=adwords&hsa_ver=3&gclid=Cj0KCQiA57G5BhDUARIsACgCYnzqfgZjmItopUUUTrWnHKRnPGkmWQDkLYV3IZDEadMBR_mhNtN3keMaAvL4EALw_wcB.

3. American Hospital Association. Survey: Drug shortages cost hospitals $360M annually. AHA News. June 27, 2019. Accessed December 4, 2024. https://www.aha.org/news/headline/2019-06-27-survey-drug-shortages-cost-hospitals-360m-annually#:~:text=Hospitals%20spend%20close%20to%20%24360,this%20week%20by%20Vizient%20Inc

4. Contributor N. Nurses waste ‘an hour a shift’ finding equipment. Nursing Times. February 10, 2009. Accessed December 4, 2024. https://www.nursingtimes.net/archive/nurses-waste-an-hour-a-shift-finding-equipment-10-02-2009/

5. Waivers and exemptions beyond the stabilization period. FDA. October 2024. Accessed October 26, 2024. https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-supply-chain-security-act-dscsa/waivers-and-exemptions-beyond-stabilization-period