Pharmacy System

Pharmacy System

The purpose of a pharmacy system is to make different types of legal drugs and medicines available to consumers in order to create revenue and help customers manage the drugs and ensure their safety. The first part of a pharmacy's system is our customers. They come to the drop-off window in order to get their prescription filled. The employee working at the window inputs the information from the prescription. After this step has been done the medicine has to be dispensed. It is up to the production line to count out the medication or pour the liquids. There could be anywhere between a couple medications to a hundred medications to count. There are several ways prescriptions can be called in. The pharmacist has doctor's lines where they call in prescriptions from the doctor's office and leave them on the voicemail or talk directly to them. Doctor's also can send them electronically through a computer system. Once we have filled the medication, it is then transferred over to the pharmacist. The pharmacist must go through a series of checks to make sure the medication is being correctly dispensed. First they must check the color of the medication. Next, they have to make sure the shape of the pill is what it should be. Finally, the pharmacist has to scan the label to make sure the product matches what the label says it should be. Once the check off is complete, the pharmacist puts the filled prescription in waiting bins for them to be picked up by the customer. The pharmacy technician calls each customer's name out to see if they are ready to pick up their medicine.

Casual Loop Diagram

Amount of Revenue Decrease in Mistakes

Customer

Satisfaction

# of prescriptions # of Stress

Customers

The two processes that drive all activity in systems are reinforcing processes and balancing processes. Reinforcing processes enhance change with even more change in the same direction. These processes can produce a lot of growth as well as collapse. If this process is positive it is called "virtuous cycle" and when it's negative it is called "vicious cycle". This diagram shows the more customers we get the more the more prescriptions we have to fill. This increases revenue. On the other hand, when the number of customers goes up the higher our stress level is so we make more mistakes. Each time this happens there is a decrease in customer satisfaction. In the pharmacy the rate of incoming customers and prescriptions increased the amount of pills to count and liquids to pour, which increased the