Case Study

Top-20 Hospital Saves $10 Million With QuicksortRx

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Situation

The pharmacy department of a 1,200-bed hospital in the Southeast was largely relying on spreadsheets and manual processes to manage and track its medication supply chain. This required allocation of significant labor to make decisions and keep information current. Because the organization lacked the tools to make timely, cost-efficient purchase decisions, it struggled to keep up with changes in the medication market.

For an organization priding itself on adopting the latest technology to deliver high-quality care and services, manual processes were coming up short.

Solution

The hospital learned about QuicksortRx through a former pharmacy resident in 2019 when pharmacists and technologists from the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) demonstrated how MUSC was using QuicksortRx software to provide timely, transparent, and actionable guidance to make better procurement decisions and decrease costs.

To say QuicksortRx has transformed how we manage our drugs purchases would be an understatement. It’s unlike any software for purchasing I’ve ever worked with. QuicksortRx provides a level of savings and visibility into our data that is lightyears ahead of what others deliver. I only wish I could have had QuicksortRx in my previous positions.

— Supervisor Pharmacist

The organization went live with QuicksortRx in August 2019. The software empowered the hospital’s pharmacy department to evaluate prices and purchases across its three account types —

Group Purchasing Organization (GPO) contracted prices
340b program prices, and
Wholesale Acquisition Cost (WAC)

— to find the most cost-effective products for the hospital to use.

Additional analytics around utilization, purchase volume, contracts, and shortages equipped procurement staff with the data and context needed to improve delivery and manage purchasing more efficiently.

Significant Savings

Easy-to-Use Platform

Navigate Drug Shortages

Results

The financial impacts from implementing QuicksortRx were immediate. The system recouped its initial investment in QuicksortRx in hard-dollar savings within 90 days and reached $1 million in savings at the end of six months. The platform was well adopted by both experienced staff and those new to pharmacy procurement.

By the end of 2022, more than $10 million in hard-dollar savings were tied directly to this pharmacy department’s utilization of QuicksortRx. Additional efficiencies from faster, clearer information were invaluable as the system navigated medication volatility during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The hospital renewed QuicksortRx for an additional three-year term in 2022 and continues to see savings upwards of $200,000 per month from its use of the platform.