(Management Case Study) Staff Empowerment: Leadership on the Frontlines

Purpose: There are many moving parts to a health-system pharmacy. At our focus is the patient and responding to their ever-changing needs. Additionally, we have to find ways to contain costs to provide expanded services and affordable patient care. This is a balance that happens every day in real time. Our pharmacy department experienced rapid growth in late 2022 through early 2023, adding many new employees as well as new leadership. In this transition, the department adopted a management philosophy of employee empowerment. This case describes the impact of employee empowerment on both quality of patient care and waste management.

Methods: Several frontline staff were identified according to their expertise and recognition as department leaders to become leads in their respective areas. Each of the three operational shift was assigned a pharmacist lead who would support the workflow and escalation of issues. In order to facilitate the escalation of issues, a dynamic huddle board was adopted to allow real time escalation by the pharmacy staff through a simple text or email. Key areas that were identified as opportunities to optimize financial stewardship was also identified including the sterile processing area and kit and tray processing area where technicians were set as leads to monitor and assess drug waste and processes. In the IV room, the lead technician helped support routine daily counts of inventory that was moved in the anterooms, real time tracking of waste and batch scanning prior to delivery was instituted in the sterile processing area. In the kit and tray area, the lead technician initiated processes to identify stock that would expire within a 90 day period to be reallocated to the main pharmacy and identified as use first to be used in preparation of medication admixtures and patient doses. Procedural agents with short stability were rotated out of kits to be placed into the operating rooms once they had 7 days remaining which allowed them used them to be used before expiration.

Results: By adopting a model of employee empowerment, there were 87 resolved escalations in the months of January to April 2023. In the sterile processing areas, there was a decrease of drug waste from almost $8,000 in March 2023 to just slightly over $6,000 in April 2023. In tray and kit processing, the cost of drug waste went from $800 in March 2023 to $300 in April 2023.

Conclusion: When employees feel that they own their workspace it can lead to increased motivation and creativity resulting in both tangible and intangible benefits to the workplace. They are able to institute working solutions as well as accept accountability for the results. In our case study, this was demonstrated through the innovation and implementation of new processes that lead to increased issue resolution and cost savings.