In all of 2012, Kit Check hospital users tracked about 77,000 medications. We saw that figure rise to about 780,000 medications in 2013. We viewed ten times growth in one year as confirmation that Kit Check could make a real impact in the industry. Seeing that figure grow another 70 times over five years is simply inspiring.
- Kit Check users have now tracked over 50 million medications.
- More than 400 hospitals now track about 2 million medications each month.
- Over 4 million pharmacy kits have been processed using Kit Check to date.
- The automation eliminated over half a billion tasks that previously required a human to individually identify medications for accuracy and expiration date.
This progression may point to the popularity of Kit Check, but more broadly shows the impact of automation. Kit Check enables streamlined pharmacy processes by leveraging data instead of tedious, manual activities.
What Kit Check Has Done
The widespread acknowledgment of Kit Check’s positive impact for hospital pharmacies in terms of time savings and greater accuracy led to a host of would-be competitors. We welcomed the competition and are proud that despite the rise of copycats and alternative approaches, Pharmacy Purchasing and Products reports that 71% of hospitals using medication tray automation have chosen to work with Kit Check.
We have stayed ahead of competitors by focusing on user needs. In addition to providing the fastest and most accurate system for crash cart and pharmacy kit restocking, Kit Check has added dozens of new features. The software supports everything from alternative workflows such as tech-check-tech verification and anesthesia drawer swaps to proactive (network) recall notifications and kit inventory par level optimization analysis.
What Our Hospital Customers Have Done
Our focus right along has been to help hospital pharmacy staff save time, reduce risk, and get more done. Some examples of how hospitals have benefitted from Kit Check include:
- Brigham and Women’s Hospital tracked over 240,000 medication in OR trays and reported zero errors. That compares favorably to field studies showing manually restocked pharmacy kits typically have a 5-35% error rate.
- Edward Hospital saved $1,000 per pharmacy kit by using medication throughput data tracked in Kit Check to optimize stocking par levels and remove unnecessary duplicate medications.
- Texas Children’s Hospital cut pharmacy kit restocking time by 96% using Kit Check while also reporting higher accuracy. The University of Michigan reported a 79.6% time savings while Wheaton-Franciscan St. Joseph reported a 75% gain in pharmacy kit restocking efficiency in an ASHP presentation.
- A peer-reviewed study published in Innovations in Pharmacy found that hospitals saved between $4.20 and $9.30 per kit processed using Kit Check. The largest contributor to the cost savings was an 80.4% reduction in the time required for restocking.
- Rita’s Hospital reported a 75% first-year ROI after implementing Kit Check that included 730 hours of time savings that were redirected toward clinical activities.
- Within minutes of releasing Kit Check’s network recalls feature, 10 hospitals were notified that they had recalled medication in pharmacy kits that required replacement. Many others since have been proactively notified of recalls by the Kit Check software before learning about them through traditional channels.
There are many more examples that we are happy to share with the community. After 50 million medications in 400 hospitals, there are countless stories. So, if you have any questions, let us know and we likely can direct you to a peer hospital that has had the same question or faced a similar problem.
Where Kit Check’s Data-enabled Automation is Headed
Kit Check more recently turned our attention to controlled substance tracking and diversion detection. Bluesight for Controlled Substances (BCS) was the result of directors of hospital pharmacy asking us if we could help them with a rapidly growing problem. BCS doesn’t involve tagged medications as the tracking is accomplished by integrating data already resident in ADCs and EMR systems but is largely inaccessible today. First, we pool the data between those systems and others related to controlled substance management processes. Then, we apply machine learning to rapidly identify discrepancies that require reconciliation and identify the problem areas (specific people, locations, medications) that correlate with diversion activity.
The response has been tremendous. We encourage you to come by our booth at ASHP #1613 to see a live demonstration of Bluesight for Controlled Substances. We are already seeing our users report that automating controlled substance audit, reconciliation, and drug diversion detection in delivering comparable benefits as Kit Check did for pharmacy kit restocking. Hospitals are catching errors immediately and addressing issues before they become bigger problems. They are reducing manual labor by as much as 94%. And, we are also helping them identify diverters based solely on their behavior patterns.
Still a Friend to the Hospital Pharmacist
Kit Check users have become a community of the leading hospitals in the U.S. and Canada. We believe the job of hospital pharmacy is best supported as a collaborative effort. I wrote in Kit Check’s first blog post way back in 2013 that one of our guiding principles was to be a friend of the hospital pharmacist. Today, after 50 million medications, I am happy that we have built a large community of friends in the pharmacy community. We strive to help these friends every day while also enabling them to help each other. If you are looking for a healthcare success story that uses data, automation, and the cloud, we can point to over 400 examples.
Thank you to the pharmacists for the work you do every day.