Baptist Health Creating Centralized Pharmacy Supply Chain Hub

Oct. 9, 2023

Kentucky-based health systems says consolidated service center model will enable it to address drug shortages, reduce inventory waste, and streamline operations

David Raths

Louisville, Ky.-based Baptist Health is establishing a consolidated pharmacy service center to provide a centralized hub for mail orders, kits and trays management, compounding and specialty pharmaceuticals.

Baptist Health consists of nine hospitals, 2,700 licensed beds, and more than 450 points of care, including outpatient facilities, physician practices and services, urgent care clinics, and outpatient diagnostic and surgery centers. In September 2022, the health system announced plans to construct a 90,000-square-foot Central Pharmacy Service Headquarters to streamline its growing pharmacy services across the system’s locations in Kentucky and southern Indiana.

To orchestrate the distribution operations for this centralized pharmacy practice, Baptist Health will use the Tecsys’ cloud-based Elite platform to consolidate and optimize logistics. The consolidation can also help maintain an appropriate inventory of antidotes, disaster medications, and other high-cost medications needed for patient care so that the health system is operationally agile while also reducing the inventory burden of each facility.

"Prioritizing patient care requires innovation, and our cutting-edge consolidated pharmacy services center is a clear example of our commitment to them,” explained Nilesh Desai, chief pharmacy officer at Baptist Health, in a statement. “With Tecsys as our software partner, we're centralizing procurement processes, optimizing pharmaceutical expenditure management, and increasing efficiencies for our staff. This allows our team to focus on strategic initiatives, ensuring timely and affordable access to essential prescriptions. By adopting best-in-class methodologies from consolidated service center supply chain models, the software enables us to address drug shortages, reduce inventory waste, and streamline our operations more effectively."

Baptist Health’s advanced pharmacy supply chain ecosystem equips the organization to achieve several key objectives, including:

Empowering pharmacists and enhancing patient care. Baptist Health’s consolidated pharmacy service center (CPSC) frees pharmacists from manual inventory management tasks, so they can dedicate more time to patient care.
Mitigating supply shortages. As drug shortages are predicted to persist, Baptist Health’s CPSC centralizes drug inventory management, allowing for efficient allocation of products across various care sites to minimize waste and expiry.

Expanding storage space and bolstering security. Centralizing operations enables strategic space utilization, including climate-controlled environments for specific drug types and secure storage areas for high-risk controlled substances, which enhances the overall security of pharmacy supply chain operations.
Enhancing strategic procurement. By consolidating demand planning and purchasing, Baptist Health will have the data insights needed to undertake strategic and volume-based initiatives, resulting in cost-effective pharmacy procurement.
Ensuring regulatory compliance. The CPSC centralizes oversight of regulatory requirements, which enables them to safeguard patient safety and maintain compliance with industry standards.