AdventHealth Improves Drug Shortage Management With QuicksortRx

When AdventHealth started using QuicksortRx in 2021, the pharmacy purchasing platform provided immediate value, recalls Director for Central Fill Pharmacy Abbi Rowe, PharmD, MHA, BCSCP, 340B ACE.

AdventHealth Central Fill Pharmacy in Orlando provides ongoing replenishment of automated dispensing cabinets to hospital campuses, clinics, and freestanding emergency departments in the organization’s Central Florida Division. 

While the financial value of QuicksortRx purchase analytics was clear from the beginning, the operational value became more apparent as the QuicksortRx team began exploring how to use its technology to help hospitals navigate drug shortages. “I was really excited when they started looking into drug shortages,” Rowe says. “Drug shortages are something we are going to struggle with for a long time, so we greatly appreciate anything that can help us.”

After gathering guidance and feedback from hospital partners, QuicksortRx published the platform’s drug shortage intelligence features in 2023, empowering Rowe to be more proactive and respond faster to drug shortage developments. “I find the drug shortage management features of QuicksortRx super helpful in my day-to-day work,” she says.

There are a few QuicksortRx drug shortage management tools that Rowe has come to rely upon. First is a page showing failure-to-supply rates for a given product or class across the country. QuicksortRx calculates and delivers failure-to-supply rates at the local, wholesaler, and global levels to help hospital pharmacies understand the scope of a given shortage over time.

“I find this feature super useful in having productive conversations with our wholesaler,” says Rowe. “When our distribution center (DC) is stocked out of a drug, wholesalers will communicate the best that they can about what’s happened, but they often just have a generic ‘item not available’ message up that doesn’t provide much information. Is it a true shortage? Is it a localized ordering blip? Is the drug coming back tomorrow? Is it coming back in a couple of months? You really don’t have any insight into what’s going on with that product.” 

When Rowe sees a generic availability message, she goes into QuicksortRx to check local availability and compares this data to the failure-to-supply rates across QuicksortRx’s national health system network for more context.

“When I dig into a drug’s failure-to-supply rates in QuicksortRx, the data gives me a better picture of the issue and what paths I can take with my wholesaler representative,” Rowe says. “If my DC is stocked out, but I know that other facilities are not having trouble accessing the medication through my same wholesaler, I’ll have data to support asking my wholesaler rep to check on an alternative DC to get us what we need. Alternatively, if the medication is short everywhere, that conversation is likely to be less productive, and I’ll know that we should start digging a little deeper to find what we need. This information from QuicksortRx has been extremely helpful in moving those conversations forward.”

Rowe says she is also able to leverage the data QuicksortRx provides to improve AdventHealth’s business relationship with their wholesaler. “If our failure-to-supply rate is consistently high locally, but stock appears solid across the country, this helps give us some targets for improvement,” she says. “We’ve used this to go to our wholesaler and collaborate on par levels, order frequency, how our utilization drives ordering patterns, and other issues. Our ability to make more specific requests supported by data has been really productive and helpful.”

Another QuicksortRx feature that has improved AdventHealth’s drug shortage management is the platform’s supplier heatmap. Rowe says this function recently helped the organization navigate the shortage of fluorescein strips. “The supplier heatmap showed me that one supplier was able to supply more consistently than others,” she says. “With this data, we’re able to focus our buyers on that manufacturer’s product, ensuring they have back orders, and partner better with that manufacturer over time.” 

The organization typically buys fluorescein strips in 100-count boxes, but the product was out of stock for every manufacturer across the board. “I looked at the QuicksortRx supplier heatmap, and while the 100-count packs were nowhere to be found, I noticed one manufacturer was shipping out 300-count packs intermittently,” Rowe says. “We can use 300-count boxes but had missed those as back orders for our pharmacy."

This experience demonstrated yet another benefit that comes with using QuicksortRx and working with the team behind it, Rowe says. “They want to know about the problems we’re facing, and they’re always looking for solutions to help. QuicksortRx has provided ongoing updates and new features from when we first became a customer."

Rowe says she works with a lot of companies, and QuicksortRx stands out. “I can definitively say that QuicksortRx is head and shoulders my favorite. They’re the most responsive and easiest to work with. Kudos to the QuicksortRx team for how fast they incorporate feedback.”