Previous studies have found that effectively planning the construction of a facility can reduce operational inefficiencies and lower costs by as much as 30%. Since pharmacies are focused on the distribution of supplies rather than interactions with patients, they could hypothetically benefit from process-improvement techniques that are often used in manufacturing industries for layout designs. While there are many studies that examine the nature of facility layout designs and how they are implemented during construction, there is a lack of research exploring these designs in the context of a hospital pharmacy.
To examine one institution’s approach to designing a facility’s layout of a small hospital pharmacy.
The authors of this study selected one hospital pharmacy located within a growing city as a focus for their research. Three new designs were created to improve the layout of the pharmacy so that increased traffic could be managed effectively. These new designs were evaluated according to 12 categories: feasibility, patient safety, cost, employee safety, robustness, flexibility, transportation distance, objective adherence, employee utilization, usability, maintainability, and environmental impact. Each design received a rating on a scale of 0-10 (0 being worst, 10 being best) according to the input of pharmacy staff and engineering designers.
After assessing the new designs according to the 12 categories, all three were found to be worth implementing in place of the current design. Since these new designs incorporated engineering tools and methodologies in their layouts, the authors infer that the application of engineering perspectives to pharmacy layouts can indeed prove beneficial. The design category of “Feasibility” often received low scores from staff and engineers due to the hospital’s available budget. One design in particular, “Design 4,” was designated the most beneficial because of improved safety and its ability to work with increased patient volume.
The authors note that staffing pattern changes within the pharmacy as well as overall costs for each new design were not assessed during research. This study considered applying engineering concepts to the layout of only one pharmacy in a relatively small city; the results may not be universally applicable to all hospital pharmacies.