As health systems expand through acquisitions, building outpatient clinics, and developing centralized distribution hubs, the complexity of pharmacy inventory management increases exponentially. Ensuring the right medications are available, in the right location, and at the right time, all while maintaining financial stewardship, becomes more challenging without the right systems in place.
Forward-thinking pharmacy leaders are turning to technology like KitCheck and KitCheck Anywhere to modernize their inventory strategies, reduce waste, and support safer patient care across the enterprise. Below are best practices for optimizing pharmaceutical inventory management in growing health systems and how KitCheck makes them achievable.
1. Increase Pharmacy Drug Inventory Turns by Automating Visibility and Usage Tracking
Inventory turns, the number of times inventory is used and replenished over a given period, is a key performance metric for pharmacy efficiency. Low turns often indicate excess or stagnant stock, tying up capital and risking expiration.
Best Practice: Implement RFID-based solutions to automatically track movement, usage, and replenishment cycles across kits, crash carts, OR trays, and satellite locations.
How KitCheck Helps:
KitCheck and KitCheck Anywhere provide real-time visibility into where medications are, how often they’re being used, and when they need restocking. By replacing manual tracking with automated RFID scanning, pharmacy teams can optimize PAR levels, avoid overstocking, and significantly increase inventory turns without sacrificing availability.
2. Reallocate At-Risk Medications Before They Expire
Drug waste due to expiration is a common and costly problem, especially in large, decentralized health systems. Medications can sit idle in one facility while being urgently needed in another.
Best Practice: Use system-wide visibility to identify underused inventory and reallocate it to higher-use locations.
How KitCheck Anywhere Helps:
With a cloud-based dashboard and RFID-enabled inventory tracking, KitCheck Anywhere gives centralized pharmacy leaders the tools to see expiration dates across all facilities, hospitals, infusion centers, and ambulatory sites, and proactively redistribute inventory before it expires. This not only reduces waste but also helps avoid expensive emergency orders and last-minute shortages.
3. Enhance Drug Shortage Management with Real-Time Location Data
In today’s healthcare environment, drug shortages are the norm, not the exception. When key medications become scarce, having accurate, real-time data is essential for clinical decision-making and operational planning.
Best Practice: Map available inventory across your network to prioritize use, support substitution strategies, and ensure equitable distribution.
How KitCheck Helps:
As a pharmaceutical stock management solution, KitCheck Anywhere enables hospitals to quickly locate available doses system-wide during a shortage, streamline recall responses, and support therapeutic interchange efforts. KitCheck Anywhere helps pharmacists identify where limited stock resides and where it’s needed most without making dozens of phone calls or checking multiple systems.
4. Standardize Kits and Trays Across Sites
As health systems grow, inconsistencies in how kits and trays are built and stocked can introduce variability, delay care, and create safety risks.
Best Practice: Standardize your medication kits, crash carts, and procedural trays with automated build and refill processes.
How KitCheck Helps:
KitCheck enables standardized builds with RFID tags that ensures every tray or cart has the correct medications. Replenishment is fast, accurate, and trackable, reducing the burden on pharmacy staff while supporting consistent care delivery.
5. Leverage Centralized Oversight Without Adding Administrative Burden
Expanding health systems need centralized control but not at the cost of local autonomy or added manual tasks.
Best Practice: Centralize visibility and analytics, but empower local teams with easy-to-use, integrated tools.
How KitCheck Anywhere Helps:
KitCheck Anywhere is built for distributed systems. It allows pharmacy leaders to remotely monitor inventory across all sites from a single platform, while empowering local teams with intuitive workflows that fit into their day-to-day operations. The result is a connected system that improves oversight without micromanagement.
Modernize to Grow
As your health system grows, your inventory management strategy can’t afford to stay static. Manual processes, disconnected systems, and siloed inventories create waste, decrease turns, increase costs, and limit responsiveness.
With KitCheck and KitCheck Anywhere, hospital pharmacy teams can:
- Increase inventory turns
- Reduce waste and expired meds
- Respond to shortages faster
- Standardize across locations
- Gain visibility that scales with your system
Ready to transform your inventory management strategy?
Schedule a demo today and see how KitCheck and KitCheck Anywhere can help your growing health system thrive.
Written by Sean Gillman, Director of Clinical Strategy at Bluesight