PHARMACY CONSULTING
Naufragato Clinical Consulting (NCC) blends a little of the past with the promise of the future, by viewing challenges as opportunities and fostering success through strategic pharmacy operations realignment. Naufragato, an Italian term defined as, “a castaway, someone who is shipwrecked,” pays homage our teams first-hand understanding of the difficulties that community, health care leadership face in today’s society with increasingly limited resources; and we want you to know that you are aren't stranded and all alone.
When your hospital needs help reducing its pharmacy spend, the Naufragato team is here to partner with you and provide both a holistic approach and plan to improve outcomes and operations.
About Fern Kaufman
Fern Kaufman, BS, MBA, PharmD is a clinical, operational and administrative pharmacy expert with thirty years of experience at every level of pharmacy practice. With a Bachelor’s degree in Pharmacy, a Master’s degree in Healthcare Business Administration and a Doctor of Pharmacy degree, Dr. Kaufman has worked as a staff pharmacist, a clinical pharmacist and has held several administrative roles as a site Pharmacy Director to a Corporate Director overseeing health system inpatient pharmacies for large IDN’s spanning the country.
Additionally, Dr. Kaufman has worked within Pharma and has developed a deep understanding of how drugs are selected, presented, priced and brought to market. With an analytical approach, our company employs several data points to structure operations to keep pharmacy inflationary costs below 1-2% annually, yielding millions in recaptured finances and cost avoidance.
Who We Are
Many consultants call upon years of experience to perfect their craft in optimizing pharmacy practice. If you are looking for a consultant to help with your pharmacy operations then you no doubt know how much this can affect your overall success.
In my experience, I've found that the I/H/C (Institutional/Hospital/Clinic) space often needs strategic help, but simply can’t afford it. Large consulting firms take a lot of money up front and charge a substantial hourly rate which is untenable in a system that often just does not have the means to contract with them. This creates a loop by which the places that need the most help are the ones who can never get it and even if they can, they are not sure that it will help and they are no better off in the end. I take a different approach.
I come in myself, clogs on the ground, scrubs on, sleeves rolled up and lay out a plan for success, and I do this on a value based fee structure.
If I don’t help, you don’t pay.
Naufragato is a small business, minority and woman owned and operated. We assess the operations top to bottom including contracting, distribution, workflow, technology assessment/acquisition and maximization, clinical programming and decentralization, committee structure/effectiveness and analytical development. We see where the problems are at a micro level and create redundancies to let the I/H/C pharmacies stand on their own once effective changes are identified and created.
Simple. Straightforward. Honest. The Perfect Consulting Solution.
How We Can Optimize Your Pharmacy Operations
Maximizing Contractual Relationships
Many hospitals have contracts in place that either need to be re-negotiated and/or maximized as they are. There are often areas to tap into with their group purchasing to realize shareback and/or contract compliance thresholds. This brings more money into the health system, simply by making essential contractual points a reality in practice. Essentially it’s taking back the money that many organizations leave on the table simply by how they interact with the GPO (Group Purchasing Organization).
Distribution of Contracts
Analyzing inventory turns, ordering stop gates, delivery frequency, GPO contract pull through and using the automated systems to realize all of the basis points that the hospital can use to reduce overall expense in their cost minus structure. This is often negotiable and untapped and can mean hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars depending upon the size of the health system and structure/utilization of the contract.
Clinical Programming
By using analytics and dashboards, we can directly detail where there are lapses in clinical treatment, physician prescribing efficiency/predictability and areas where the top costs are not aligned with the ICD-10 coding to maximize the payment structure to the hospital for patient care. Hospitals get a lump sum for the primary diagnosis on admission and this is often mismanaged; thus, the hospital loses money on admissions instead of aligning care and discharging the patient in the allotted length of stay that is being paid for. Focusing on this would reduce the cost of the admission, reduce readmissions which are not paid for and allow the hospital/health system (IDN) to keep the profit instead of taking a loss. This comes from site specific analytics, standing up clinical programs and having the pharmacy staff very strategically placed to influence the patient case. As a result, a customized message is then crafted that speaks to the C-Suite, medical and nursing staffs and employs the ancillary departments more heavily, such as clinical nutrition and PT/OT, for example. I take a holistic view of the patient case which incorporates a heavy pharmacy presence.
Workflow Realignment
Designing a workflow realignment and a more blended staff and leadership that allows the pharmacy to become much more integrated with the entire patient case. In the business, we call this “getting out of the basement”, a reference to pharmacies historically being in the basement next to the boiler room instead of deployed everywhere in the hospital and integrated with the immediate care team at every turn.
Maximizing Technology
This allows the work to shift to more hands on integrated and efficient work, reduces the need for full time employees (FTEs) and reduces the chances of errors with the highlight on patient safety which is not only important in the practice of pharmacy, but also for the regulatory bodies inspecting year round.
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For any inquiries, questions or commendations, please call: 267-415-6331 or fill out the following form