Question

Consider the following process at a pharmacy. Customers drop off their prescriptions either in the drive-through counter or in the front counter of the pharmacy. Customers can request that their prescription be filled immediately. In this case, they have to wait between 15 minutes and one hour depending on the current workload. Most customers are not willing to wait that long, so they opt to nominate a pickup time at a later point during the day. Generally, customers drop their prescriptions in the morning before going to work (or at lunchtime) and they come back to pick up the drugs after work, typically between 5pm and 6pm.When dropping their prescription, a technician asks the customer for the pick-up time and puts the prescription in a box labeled with the hour preceding the pick-up time. For example, if the customer asks to have the prescription be ready at 5pm, the technician will drop it in the box with the label 4pm (there is one box for each hour of the day). Every hour, one of the pharmacy technicians picks up the prescriptions due to be filled in the current hour. The technician then enters the details of each prescription (e.g. doctor details, patient details and medication details) into the pharmacy system. As soon as the details of a prescription are entered, the pharmacy system performs an automated check called Drug Utilization Review (DUR). This check is meant to determine if the prescription contains any drugs that may be incompatible with other drugs that had been dispensed to the same customer in the past, or drugs that may be inappropriate for the customer taking into account the customer data maintained in the system (e.g. age). Any alarms raised during the automated DUR are reviewed by a pharmacist who performs a more thorough check. In some cases, the pharmacist even has to call the doctor who issued the prescription in order to confirm it. After the DUR, the system performs an insurance check in order to determine whether the customer’s insurance policy will pay for part or for the whole cost of the drugs. In most cases, the output of this check is that the insurance company would pay for a certain percentage of the costs, while the customer has to pay for the remaining part (also called the co-payment). The rules for determining how much the insurance company will pay and how much the customer has to pay are very complicated. Every insurance company has different rules. In some cases, the insurance policy does not cover one or several drugs in a prescription, but the drug in question can be replaced by another drug that is covered by the insurance policy. When such cases are detected, the pharmacist generally calls the doctor and/or the patient to determine if it is possible to perform the drug replacement. Once the prescription passes the insurance check, it is assigned to a technician who collects the drugs from the shelves and puts them in a bag with the prescription stapled to it. After the technician has filled a given prescription, the bag is passed to the pharmacist who double-checks that the prescription has been filled correctly. After this quality check, the pharmacist seals the bag and puts it in the pick-up area. When a customer arrives to pick up a prescription, a technician retrieves the prescription and asks the customer for payment in case the drugs in the prescription are not (fully) covered by the customer’s insurance. With respect to the above process, consider the following questions:

a. What value does the process deliver to its customer(s)?

b. What are the possible outcomes of this process?

c. Taking the perspective of the customer, what performance measures can be attached to this process?

d. What potential issues do you foresee this process might have? What information would you need to collect in order to analyze these issues?

e. What possible changes do you think could be made to this process in order to address the above issues?

Answer 1

a:- What value does the process deliver to its customer(s)?

Answer:

The value that this process delivers is that they get an accurate and good quality product. They care for the customer and verify whether the product can be given to the customer or it requires some recommendation from a medical practitioner. The process delivers value by delivering the correct product in a timely manner to satisfy customers

b:- What are the possible outcomes of this process?

Answer:

The outcome of this process is customer satisfaction. It will provide an opportunity to create loyal customers and in turn, expand the business in an effective manner. It will result in the pharmacy focusing on improving the overall quality of the staffs to ensure the right products are delivered on time.

c:- Taking the perspective of the customer, what performance measures can be attached to this process?

Answer:

From the customer perspective, the process should ensure that there is no crowd mismanagement and there should be a proper queue system. The pharmacist should clarify the doubt of the customers and should explain the prescription to the customer. It will improve the overall quality of the process and customer satisfaction.

d:- What potential issues do you foresee this process might have? What information would you need to collect in order to analyze these issues?

Answer:

As different customers visit every time it's hard to provide such services to the customers. Verification process and assembling all the items requires more time. In case of a crowd, there could be confusion in delivering customer’s order as the pharmacist verify the bill with the order and not with the customer.

e:- What possible changes do you think could be made to this process in order to address the above issues?

Answer:

The main issue in this process is delivering the correct order to the right customer. Delivery mismatches are highly possible. In this case, a customer account or ID should be created for every customer so that while taking the delivery the customer’s ID can be matched with the bill and order.