Pharmacy leaders are under constant pressure to reduce drug spend while ensuring medications are available when patients need them. Too often, those goals pull in opposite directions. Cost initiatives are evaluated in one workflow, while shortage mitigation is assessed in another. The result is a procurement process that forces trade-offs instead of informed choices.
The High Stakes of Drug Procurement Decisions
Drug shortages continue to be the number one challenge for hospital pharmacies for over a decade, with 70% of hospitals currently managing 10 or more shortages simultaneously. This reality creates significant operational burden:
- U.S. hospitals collectively spend 20.2 million additional labor hours annually managing drug shortages
- Labor requirements for shortage management have increased 2.3x since 2019
- 42% of hospitals report postponing patient care due to shortages
The challenge intensifies when cost-driven decisions lead to “change whiplash” – making a switch to a lower-cost alternative, only to find it unavailable weeks later. Pharmacy teams are forced to reverse course, source emergency supply, and absorb higher prices and added labor.
Integrating Cost Optimization with Supply Intelligence
The most effective procurement strategy balances immediate savings with future supply stability. But for many pharmacy teams, that balance has been difficult to achieve in practice. Cost optimization tools and shortage management strategies have historically been separate processes, requiring manual cross-checking and judgment calls made with incomplete information.
To address this gap, CostCheck now includes Shortage Risk Indicators, incorporating predictive insights from ShortageCheck directly into procurement optimization workflows. The goal is not to replace cost-focused decision-making, but to add context where it matters most.
Within CostCheck, pharmacy teams can now see:
- Forward-looking shortage risk alongside cost-saving recommendations
- Clear Low, Medium, or High risk indicators at the NDC level
- Contextual information explaining the supply chain signals driving each risk flag
This approach helps teams assess savings opportunities with a clearer understanding of potential downstream consequences.
From Change Whiplash to Informed Decisions
The value of this integration depends on the strength of the underlying data. ShortageCheck monitors more than 25 supply chain signals across 3,250+ healthcare organizations and 55 million invoices to identify early signs of disruption. Historically, this model has shown to predict shortages an average of 52 days before they appear on official reports.
This predictive power fundamentally changes how pharmacy teams approach cost-saving opportunities:
Before: A pharmacy identifies a potential $50,000 annual savings opportunity by switching suppliers for a critical medication. They implement the change, only to face a shortage two months later, requiring emergency purchases at a 300% markup, wiping out the forecasted savings and creating additional labor costs.
Now: The same pharmacy sees that savings opportunity in CostCheck, but notices a red “High Risk” shortage indicator. They decide to delay implementation or develop a contingency plan, avoiding the disruption altogether.
A More Complete Drug Purchasing Approach
At its core, the dilemma of savings competing with shortages is not a budgeting problem, it’s a context problem. Effective procurement is not about finding the lowest price, but about choosing options that hold up over time, reduce disruption, support patient care, and improve the pharmacy’s budget.
When supply risk is surfaced at the same time as cost opportunities, procurement decisions change. Teams can delay switches, plan contingencies, or prioritize stability for critical medications. Predictive shortage intelligence, based on real purchasing and supply chain signals, allows pharmacies to move from reacting to shortages to anticipating them – often weeks in advance. To learn more about how CostCheck’s Shortage Risk Indicators can help your organization balance cost optimization with supply resilience, download the one page overview or request a CostCheck demo.