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Guys & St. Thomas

NHS Foundation Trust improves medicines management with CRD automated reporting from ChristianSteven Software
When Guys & St. Thomas NHS Foundation Trust needed a way to automate the distribution of expenditure and prescribing reports it turned to CRD (Crystal Reports Distributor) from ChristianSteven Software. The resulting solution provides clinical, finance and pharmacy teams with improved control over both the cost and supply of critical medicines. Background and Challenge Guys & St. Thomas NHS Foundation Trust is one of the largest hospital trusts in the

UK, with a planned turnover in 2009/10 approaching 917m. The Trust has over 9,000 employees, 1200 beds and treats hundreds of thousands of inpatients, day cases, outpatients and A&E attendees every year. The Trust is made up of two of Londons oldest and most well-known hospitals, which have been at the forefront of medical progress and innovation since they were founded nearly 900 years ago. Danny Palmer, Medicines Procurement Specialist at the Trust, explains further Our

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busy, 300-strong pharmacy operation plays an important role in the smooth running of the Trust. Medicines form a significant proportion of the Trusts budget, amounting to an estimated 70m per annum expenditure. It is therefore critical that our pharmacy, clinical and finance teams have timely information available in order to better evaluate prescribing patterns, manage cost, reduce waste and ensure optimum supply. When Danny joined the Trust, CRD from ChristianSteven Software was already in use, linked to the pharmacy computer system (JAC) via Crystal Reports. However, CRD was mainly being used to automatically distribute month-end expenditure reports to pharmacists, directorate leads and the finance department, and only covered a small part of the total reporting needs of the Trust. Danny continues We could see how we could extend CRD to provide a more proactive and timely view of medicine expenditure and supply. The software was intuitive and easy to use, so I began working with the clinical, pharmacy and finance teams to build reports that would be automatically sent on a more regular basis.

full-time informatics administrator, this alone has meant CRD has already paid for itself several times over.

of availability. The initial information, collated in an external database, is driven by an hourly data extract from the pharmacy system that is automated by CRD. The process of automatically chasing these overdue orders saves the pharmacy department several days of staff time each month, but more importantly it ensures we are in a more informed position regarding the supply of important medicines to our patients.

However, the real value of using CRD comes from how the Trust is able to better manage the supply and use of medicines. Danny continues Traditionally, medicines usage data had only been available as a retrospective month-end directorate report. By introducing daily and weekly trigger reports on specific medicines activity the pharmacy teams have been able to react quicker and influence medicines prescribing. The biggest impact areas have been in antibiotic prescribing and the management of high cost medicines. CRD has also been used to manage potential shortages in the supply of medicines. Since early 2009, the UK has seen a noticeable decline in the availability of key branded medicines, originating from the weakening of the pound against the euro. Ensuring the supply of medicines has therefore become a major concern across the NHS with each Trust investing in additional resources to manage shortages before they become critical. To address this situation, Guys & St. Thomas pharmacy developed a system using CRD to automatically remind suppliers when orders were overdue. Danny explains At any one time we might have between 400 and 500 outstanding order lines that have passed their expected delivery date. Using the business automation capabilities of CRD we schedule a weekly report for our larger suppliers and automatically send customised emails with an attached PDF form asking them to update us with details CRD for Crystal Reports, part of the powerful range of business automation software, alongside SQL-RD for Microsoft SQL Server and MARS for Microsoft Access.
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The Future Danny concludes CRD has enabled us to more closely monitor the use of medicines across the Trust, transforming the way we manage our service and enabling us gain better control over availability and usage. The great thing is we are only just scratching the surface of what CRD can do. We already have plans to automate exploring using CRD to drive more efficiency by helping us to model activity and workflow across the pharmacy department. This will mean an even higher return on our initial investment.
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other business processes and are

Solution and Benefits ChristianSteven Software CRD is now a core part of the pharmacy operation, automatically scheduling and distributing hundreds of different reports. Danny comments Once set up and configured on a robust platform CRD runs unassisted, freeing up hours of resources every month. Without automation we would require a

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