OCR Text |
Show THE EASY WAY TO BUY NEW OR GINTLY USED ITEMS HILLTOP TIMES TIMES January 8, 2009 SENIOR AIRMAN JASON BURTON/U.S. Air Force Lt Col. Therese Bohusch, 75th Medical Operations Squadron Primary Care Team Flight commander, gives Col. Linda Medler, 75th Air Base Wing commander, a tour of the current physical therapy clinic and describes the plan for renovation and expansion of the physical therapy section. Expansion plans include increasing staff and Physical Therapy section square footage by almost 60 percent. GROUP From page 1 . responsive emergency team. "We started building our relationship with C.E. readiness," McGurl said. "We were mandated to do this before, but we wanted to come together as a team with emergency management, bioenvironmental engineering, the fire department and EOD, to become an effective emergency response force for the wing." McGurl and his flight began internal training exercises with C.E. readiness and the fire department, facilitated theirrelationships and recognized them for awards. . "During the Unit Compliance Inspection, the Emergency Management and BEE team was recognized as an Outstanding Team," McGurl said. BEE, CE Readiness and the Fire Department continued training on their wartime and peacetime emergency response skills throughout the past few months. In addition, the entire 75th MDG has enhanced it's emergency response capability and devoted a tremendous amount of effort to ensuring it is prepared to respond to any catastrophic event. "We've done a lot of training with the disaster teams and chiefs, to make sure that we are ready to go, and we've beefed up our training and exercise schedule and coordinated with the wing for 2009," McGurl said. Pharmacy gets nipped and tucked QUALITY CONSIGNMENTS Warehouse Outlet 548 W. 300 N,, Ogden "When I first got here as a pharmacist, I really could not recognize our workflow," said Maj. Rodney Jorstad, Pharmacy Flight commander. "First thing we did was a value-stream analysis, where we looked at overall work- "When I first got here as a pharmacist I really could not recognize our workflow. First thing we did was a valuestream analysis, where we looked at overall workflow and efficiency in the pharmacy." MAJ. RODNEY JORSTAD, Pharmacy Flight chief flow and efficiency in the pharThat analysis showed that the was taking.35 physical steps to fill one prescription because the layout of the pharmacy required the team to travel more than necessary. The pharmacy decided to remodel its space to a more efficient layout and make room for new, standardized automation. "We've seen at least a 50 percent decrease in those steps," Jorstad reports. t'The pharmacy employees commented on how much more energy they have at the end of the day versus before and that allowed us time to track and work on other things." Among those "other things" were their error rates, and their newfound time and energy allowed them to reduce their error rates by 54 percent. One simple change the pharmacy made greatly reduced time and errors and cost them nothing to incorporate: moving the pharmacist from the end of the prescription filling process to the beginning. "When we looked at the workflow and the function of the pharmacist, we recognized that it was a clinic piece and there was nothing that mandated that the pharmacist should be at the end of the process," Jorstad explains. "We moved the pharmacist from the end of the processing line to the front, where the pharmacist checks the order before the order is filled. This reduces the amount of rework down the line." The pharmacy also saved time and money by moving the logistics team, which accepts the pharmacy shipments, from downstairs into its pharmacy. "When logistics received our order shipments, logistics scanned in all the shipments downstairs and they brought them upstairs to the pharmacy to be shelved," Jorstad said. "It took an hour to an hour and a half to do that. Now we have logistics bring the shipments up to the pharmacy1 immediately after they receive them and they scan them1 in whiles people put them on the shelves. That process has saved that hour, and we can have orders in by 10 (a.m.)." Another initiative the pharmacy took on was to update its automation, the system that counts and fills the prescription bottles, to the Air Force standard machine called the PharmASSIST. "Switching to this new system has saved the pharmacy approximately $75,000 per year that we were paying for maintenance and leasing costs on the old system. The new system also cuts down on the manual counting of the medication and these machines are much faster," Jorstad says. "Our system is 100 percent bar-coded, and that greatly reduces error rates." Jorstad and his team are not keeping these improvements a secret. "We are working on putting out a standardized workflow and logistics to AFMC to apply Air Force-wide. We are giving r other Air Force bases our proven methods with proven efficiencies See GROUP I page 5 SERVICE IS OUR MIDDLE NAME www.qualityconsignments.net Transportation available from TWO MEN AND A TRUCK. "Movers Who Core." Save Money "'• With A High I Efficiency Furnace! \ Easy Financing Serving Northern Utah 444-9213 WINTER HOURS: MON-FRIt NOON-6PM SATURDAYS 10AM-2PM FREE 300 N. [Buy one burrito get one FREE;I 548 W. 300 N. BDO Ogdcn NOW SERVING BREAKFAST BURRITOS 6 A.M- - lo:3O A.M. -• 2ND STREET f • iu r 6 A.M. -10:30 A.M. ^ARMSTRONG , Expires Jan 31, 2009 3 BLOCKS NORTH OF THE STANDARD-EXAMINER TO SELL YOUR ITEMS CALL 801-625-4300 520 South State, Clearfield 393-1265 773-4836 292-1636 Weber County Davis/Morgan SERVICE IS OUR MIDDLE NAME I Join us for the best Hamburgers and French Fries in Utah # - 10:30 A.M. -10:00 P.M. Daily 2583 No. Main • Sunset, UT Take Roy Exit - go left on 1900 W. - go 1 mile and we're on the right 10 4MSIS l-a-09, |