Abstract
SEKI Chuo Hospital has been making use of TQM as a tool for the hospital operation since 2004. Its Department of Pharmacy , along with the rapid expansion of medical services in recent years, provides multitask medical services including drug administration guidance for patients and team medicine in wards, which are all additional to its conventional pharmaceutical services. Amid such complications, in line with the hospital’s management policies, Department of Pharmacy has set two goals: (1) to provide patients with safety and peace in mind, and (2) to contribute to the stable hospital management, and thus conducted its activities by using the TQM techniques. To attain these goals, the department has visualized the process flow chart of its services, promoted time study, 5S, and standardization of its services, and thereby eliminated unevenness, unreasonableness, and needlessness. As a result, the department has been able to reduce its dispensing working hours to 60% of the conventional ones and also increase the number of drug administration guidance cases at the time of hospital discharge by 45%. In addition, promoting 5S and creating new rules have enabled the inventory management of medication to make progress, reducing the inventory level at inventory clearance to 49% of the peak level.
Furthermore, without expanding its staff size, the department has come to have its staff value highly evaluated through making its services more efficient and standardized, on top of enabling reduction in its overtime hours.
