Basically, the workflow that we initially designed prior to installing the carousels had gone out the window in favor of a haphazard method of making sure that things get accomplished in the pharmacy. Some call it organized chaos, but I’m not too sure about that. Chaotic? Yes. Organized? Uh, well, not so much.

The initial workflow design called for drugs entering the pharmacy to be identified, barcoded and added to the AutoPharm, Pharmacy and Pyxis systems prior to making their way to the carousels for storage. In reality, newly received medications that are not in the system are discovered during the restocking process. Therefore, our workflow is centralized at the carousels themselves, not at the back of the pharmacy as originally thought.

This isn’t the only area that appears to have gone sideways from the original plan. Several areas in the pharmacy have morphed into something completely different than originally designed. The unfortunate result is a very inefficient workflow with poor communication secondary to groups of people working in silos; not good.

So, I took some time and did what every red-blooded American does when something like this happens: I got a Diet Pepsi and started surfing the internet in search of answers. I ran out of Diet Pepsi without finding a decent solution to my problem. I used every trick in find-anything-you-want-on-the-internet bag of tricks and came up empty handed. Apparently people don’t publish this information openly on the internet. I realize that every pharmacy workflow will be different, but don’t you think there would be some general guidelines out there somewhere? Yeah, me too.

Anyone have any suggestions? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?