Time Motion Study to analyse the Medication Management from Prescription to Administration in a Private Hospital at East India

Abstract

Indian healthcare systems have passing through a state of transition and especially tertiary hospitals face daunting challenges, like evolving technologies and reimbursement policies, and a worsening skilled workforce shortage. A reconsideration of skilled health manpower and work processes holds the potential to affect the efficiency and effectiveness of health care delivery for the foreseeable future. The time and motion study are to understand the time taken in several work stations and used for performance, evaluation, and planning of any process. The Hospital under study was facing some issues of Medication management and there by Patient satisfaction and patient safety was under risk. This is a Cross sectional Observation study. It starts from Medication prescription to Indenting, arranging, dispensing, and finally to administration to the patient. Three Volunteers were recorded the data One at Ward level, One at Pharmacy Level and One at Transportation Level. A total of 80 prescriptions were tracked from different Wards or ICU areas. A total six time were recorded and six duration were found namely D1 (Prescription to Indent Time), D2(Indent to Dispense Time), D3(Dispense to Delivery Time), D4(Delivery to Receiving Time), D5(Receiving to Administration Time) & D6 (Prescription to Administration Time).It was found that average time taken for various process are as D1 – 236 minutes (3 Hrs 56 mints), D2 -120minutes (2 Hrs), D3 – 162 minutes (2 Hrs 42 mints), D4 - 38 min, D5 – 535minutes (8 Hrs 55 mints), & D6 – 1091minutes (18 Hrs 11 mints). In all areas average distribution of five duration are D1(22%), D2(11%), D3(15%), D4(3%) and D5(49%). On detail discussion over interview, it was found that Pharmacist and Nursing Manpower may need optimization. Although an age-old technique, Time Motion study can be used to analyse any process flow to detect the bottlenecks and find the suitable solution to the problems.