Inventory accountability is an important aspect of responsible Public Health service administration. The aim of this project is to improve the accuracy of inventory reports generated by the North Carolina Immunization Registry (NCIR) and assure the balancing of those reports with the New Hanover County Health Department’s (NHCHD) physical inventory counts by August, 2011. The NHCHD quality improvement team will use the QI101 training program and the Lean Kaizen event support team to design, test and implement changes to our current reporting and inventory processes.
Decrease the variance between the physical inventory and the NCIR reported inventory by 90%.
Each time Fiscal team and Immunization Coordinator would do the daily, weekly or monthly inventory; there were always variances between the physical count and NCIR. The variances could not be accounted for. Our agency felt that we needed to update policies, streamline the process and eliminate distractions.
Yes. Activity 15.4: The local health department shall assess the internal and external resources that are available or needed to implement proposed new or updated policies and procedures. We updated and had approved three policies during this project.
Always look for latest new guidance from the CDC… they change!
Reduced variances between actual inventory and NCIR inventory. These variances over one year had an estimated value of $30,725.25.
Developed procedure for training staff and vaccine accountability.
Reduction in errors and waste.
Tried new clinic rotation schedule to allow consistent staffing of general clinic nurse to eliminate constant learning curve currently present in 2 month/8 month rotations. This did not work due to we have to have all staff cross-trained for back-up for coverage for vacations, sick time, meetings, trainings and other clinics. Limiting the immunization clinic to only three trained nurses limited coverage when the three nurses were not available.