Georgia pharmacy shines

Henry Towne Centre pharmacy team

On to the Peach State in May. We wish that everyone could meet some of the great people we get the pleasure to encounter. Among them: Dawn Bading, vice president of human resources and her Coalition partner, National Coordinator Jenee Dixon, Peter Andruszkiewicz, president of the Georgia Region, Rob Schreiner, MD, executive medical director, Chief Operations Officer Sally Sidwell and Rick Brown of the United Food and Commercial Workers. UBT regional co-leads Frances Monteiro and Ally Neighbors have a clear understanding of the importance of frontline engagement. They recognize that when the frontline employees are part of a decision-making process there is much more buy-in and energy toward execution.

We encountered a very special team at the Henry Towne Centre. The Leadership team is Alan Johnson, Manager, Medical Center Administration, Kim Mbaye, RN, Oncology and Dr. Robert Cohen. This trio is a great example of how to engage teams early on in identifying issues and finding possible solutions. They have anything but a top-down decision making process, with the front line in charge of implementing their own decisions. 

The pharmacy team had been struggling for years. All kinds of “leadership solutions” had been tried without success. The team met  with a facilitator for an hour each month and identified the root cause issue and began a PDSA cycle. Not only did the team create a solution that has improved service and quality, but it has also saved thousands of dollars in pharmacy costs. An outside contracted MD group did not have access to the KP Formulary and would write prescriptions we did not stock in our small pharmacy. Once they got the formulary they began writing prescriptions on the list, which saved multiple trips to the pharmacy, as we stocked the formulary drugs, and saved the cost of using our formulary medications.

PS. Dan is driving next time!

For more on the Henry Towne Centre pharmacy UBT go to Georgia pharmacy team's Rx for success on LMPartnership.org.