Reliability modelling of dispensing processes in community pharmacy

Naybour, M.; Remenyte-Prescott, Rasa; Boyd, Matthew

Abstract

Studies of error rates in community pharmacies have reported error rates of between 0.014% and 3.3% per item dispensed. This suggests up to 36 million items per year may contain errors in England. In addition, literature shows that patient satisfaction with services is directly related to waiting times. There is a need for a method to model pharmacy efficiency balancing safety and waiting times, ensuring that the reliability of the dispensing process is not compromised. In this paper a Coloured Petri Net (CPN) approach is proposed for analysing reliability and efficiency of community pharmacy. A pharmacy team work to complete dispensing and non-dispensing tasks, where non-dispensing tasks require staff to be temporarily removed from the dispensing process. The proposed approach is useful to investigate what affects the error rates and long waiting times, and provides modelling-based evidence to decision makers, looking to optimise staffing levels and improve the reliability of dispensing.

Citation

Naybour, M., Remenyte-Prescott, R., & Boyd, M. (2018). Reliability modelling of dispensing processes in community pharmacy. In Proceedings of the 10th IMA International Conference on Modelling in Industrial Maintenance and Reliability. https://doi.org/10.19124/ima.2018.001.18

• Conference Name: 10th IMA International Conference on Modelling in Industrial Maintenance and Reliability (MIMAR 2018)
• Conference Location: Manchester, UK
• Start Date: Jun 13, 2018
• End Date: Jun 15, 2018
• Acceptance Date: May 1, 2018
• Publication Date: Jun 13, 2018
• Deposit Date: Jul 4, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 4, 2018
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Book Title: Proceedings of the 10th IMA International Conference on Modelling in Industrial Maintenance and Reliability
• ISBN: 978-0-905091-32-7
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.19124/ima.2018.001.18
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/937776
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.19124/ima.2018.001.18
• Related Public URLs: https://ima.org.uk/proceedings-mimar-10/
• Additional Information: ISBN of conference proceedings: 978-0-905091-32-7.; doi:10.19124/ima.2018.001.18