EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT OF MEDICAL SUPPLIES.

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The Buddhachinaraj Phitsanulok hospital’s medical supply management department is responsible for selecting and supplying medications on a restricted budget. Therefore, this study aimed to provide a management strategy to increase efficiency in pharmaceutical management using ABC-VED matrix analysis technique. This technique was used to group the drugs to decide appropriate amounts of drug reserves and used them to promote rational drug use. Drug purchasing quality drugs, surveillance and monitoring system for drug-quality problems were used to effectively manage pharmaceuticals on a limited budget.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to study the pharmaceutical administration efficiency using ABC-VED matrix analysis technique to analyze drug groups, and compared the cost savings with other drug purchasing methods including price investigation, price negotiation with the high priced monopolies, electronic bidding (e-bidding) and selection method.

METHODS: This was a descriptive research. The data was retrospectively collected during the fiscal year 2020-2022. The sample group consisted of drug list and drug cost purchased using the pharmaceutical management program. The data was analyzed using ABC-VED matrix method, and presented in number, percentages, cost and mean.

RESULTS: The drugs were sorted by drug lists and cost, using ABC-VED matrix. The amount of drug lists in a group from most to least were as follows: essential items (group E), desirable items (group D), vital items (group V). The amounts of drug lists in subgroups from most to least were CE, BE, AE, CD, BD, AD, CV, BV and AV, apart from 2021 which AD drugs were more than BD drugs. In contrast, the drugs could be divided into 3 divisions by drug cost. High cost drugs consisted of AE and AD drug groups. Middle cost drugs consisted of AV and BE drug groups. Low cost drugs consisted of BD, BV, CE, CD and CV drug groups. Analyzing 2021-2022 purchases, the cost savings from each purchasing method were 15.08 million baht/ 165 drug items with price investigation method, 4.08 million baht/ 83 drug items with monopoly price negotiation, 10.56 million baht/33 drug items with E-bidding, and 6.66 million baht / 5 drug items with drug selection method. Each purchasing method’s cost saving per drug item from most to least were drug selection, e-bidding, price investigation, and price negotiation with the high priced monopolies, respectively. The average inventory index of fiscal year 2020-2022 were 1.12, 1.06 and 1.03 respectively.

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION: To effectively manage medical supplies, the ABC-VED matrix analysis results were used to properly determine the monthly amount of each drug group reserve needed, especially AE and AD group which were important factors in controlling budgets. Drug selection was the most cost saving drug purchasing method (Cost saving per drug item). Due to the small amount of items in drug selection method, E-bidding was recommended for cost saving. Reducing the procurement of AD group drugs which were high cost and less-needed could help in case of the insufficient budget.