Improving commodity management
As the great egg timer of fate runs out on my last days in Kenya, let’s review the 5S activities I have been progressing. Do you recall what 5S is ? It is an improvement activity aimed at creating and enabling our physical work environment. This has involved field excursions back to some of the facilities I first visited earlier in my secondment. So it gives me a great opportunity to show some of what we have been doing, before signing off from PULSE and returning to my life and GSK back in the UK.
With the support of the procurement logistics team in SAVE and my colleague Chrispinus, we have been renovating, installing and reorganising pharmacy stores in several facilities.
Firstly KOSHOK Dispensary (which has rated a mention a few times in my blogs due to it’s inaccessibility and lack of proper facilities)
“What was it like before?”
During our commodity management mentoring and assessment visit in August, we discussed with the Facility-In-Charge(FIC) about the lack of any proper storage and commodity management at the Koshok dispensary. This facility was lacking resources to improve. It was obvious that Koshok could not make further improvements required such as monthly inventory counts and quantification (calculating consumption data) without first organising the commodities. This would make them accessible and make data collection more efficient.
The pharmacy store was without any lighting and was very disorganised. All pharms were discovered to be held in cardboard boxes on the floor and were mixed together with no segregation of items.
This would have made inventory checks well nigh impossible as well as leading to risks of stock expiring because it was hidden away and mixed up.
“What is it like now?”
The shelving installation was prepared during a previous visit to measure up and assess requirements. We agreed with the FIC that we would move the store to a more accessible location next to the consulting area. We also created a dispensing shelf array in the consultation room to allow the clinical officer to dispense medications at the point of diagnosis. We also collated all pharm commodities from the old store and reorganised them by therapeutic area (e.g antibiotics, anti-malarials etc).Thus when the carpenter had finished we were able to immediately transfer the stock, consolidated and arranged by therapy area onto the new available storage space. We also mounted a thermometer and clipboard, which may be completed daily to verify temperature control in the new store.
“How will this change improve the commodity management and service provided?”
It will be much easier now to conduct inventory counts, and also to place the BIN cards with the stock. This will make it very efficient to maintain stock keeping records. The availability of the stock will improve the efficiency of providing services to clients when medicines are required to be dispensed. This will mean the nurse may see more clients every day. It also creates a defined dispensary area as well a defined pharms store, promoting good dispensing practices. It will also improve the ability of the FIC to conduct a quantification exercise to assess consumption rates when compiling the quarterly order for sub-county pharmacist. This, in turn, will ensure that items are not over ordered (leading to write offs) or under ordered (leading to stock outs).
In summary, the facility will now be much more professional, presenting a much better impression image to its clients about the services provided and the management of commodities.
I hope a few other photos will speak for themselves about similar improvements we made in other facilities.