The Medical University of South Carolina

The Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) in Charleston is the oldest medical school in the South and South Carolina’s only integrated, academic health sciences center.

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Situation

When Frank Giuliano joined MUSC in October 2021, he brought several years of retail pharmacy experience but had never worked in health system pharmacy or supply chain.

Less than one year after joining MUSC’s retail pharmacy department, Giuliano assumed the role of procurement lead for MUSC’s Pharmacy Distribution Center where his responsibilities included drug purchase surveillance, contract and price management, medication procurement, and distribution of medications between multiple MUSC facilities across South Carolina.

Giuliano needed to get up to speed quickly as pharmacy staff and patients depend on this work to ensure the health system has the medications it needs. Efficient tools and high-level support would be essential for taking on this new challenge.

Fortunately, there was a solution in place. QuicksortRx was developed and implemented by MUSC in 2018 to drive better pharmacy procurement decisions and reduce medication expenses.

Solution

QuicksortRx empowers Giuliano to instantly assess medication price, availability, and purchasing trends across multiple facilities and their many account classes — Group Purchasing Organization (GPO) contracted prices, 340b program prices, and Wholesale Acquisition Cost (WAC). This allows Giuliano to find the most cost-effective products to standardize.

I’m essentially in QuicksortRx all day. I review our purchases from the day before, identify areas for improvement, and communicate what I learn with our different departments. The ability to see real-time data on enterprise-wide purchases at MUSC is incredibly valuable.

Frank Giuliano

Clinical Pharmacy Specialist Procurement Lead

What Giuliano finds particularly helpful is the ease with which he can identify these kinds of opportunities. “I’m not the most technically savvy individual, but I have no problem working in the platform. Once you get familiar with the layout, how the platform works, and how to make changes, it’s easy to do what you want to do.”

If Giuliano does have questions, he knows he can always reach the QuicksortRx team. “I can’t speak highly enough about them. They helped me transition into this position and are always there to help me with anything.”

Significant Cost Savings

Supporting new purchasing staff

Results

QuicksortRx’s expert support continues to team up with Giuliano regularly to identify cost savings and implement workflow improvements. Giuliano shared two examples of how the platform has made a substantial impact on the health system’s bottom line.

Significant Cost Savings

In the summer of 2022, a medication MUSC was purchasing for 55 cents suddenly jumped to $2,460 — projecting more than $1.2 million in annual increased costs for the health system. “I was immediately alerted to this change in QuicksortRx.” Giuliano recalls. “I was able to swap us to another product before any purchases were made at this new price.”

Prevent Surplus Stock

During routine surveillance with QuicksortRx, Giuliano noticed MUSC was purchasing abnormal quantities of a vaccine for use in the emergency room. Giuliano worked with MUSC team members to determine that the quantity of the vaccine in stock was not updated as orders arrived. “Had QuicksortRx not brought this issue to our attention, those daily orders would have continued, presumably until the department ran out of space to store the vaccine,” Giuliano says.