11th Annual Conference Report

Truly the most productive place for an institutional Pharmacy Buyer from August 13 to 16 was at The Orleans Hotel & Arena in Las Vegas, where this year’s annual trek to the desert contained a plethora of useful information and contacts that will surely catapult the audience to higher levels of performance during the upcoming months.  Astute Pharmacy Directors who sent their purchasing pros to this convention will reap the benefits from more informed and enthusiastic Buyers who realize that they are not alone in this profession, where spending money wisely and productively can save thousands for their facilities every month. 

This year, we had a total of 403 Buyer Attendees, and 83 Sponsoring display companies and 16 non-displaying companies, with about 425 vendor representatives in total.

Buyers who attend this conference often sacrifice their time and even some personal funds to get there, because they know that the learning they encounter and the contacts they meet will serve them and their hospitals effectively throughout their professional years as Buyers.  Educational grants went to 78 Pharmacy Buyers as provided by supportive vendors to Summerdale Enterprises, Inc. that established criteria based upon need and what employers were or were not willing to pay toward travel expenses.  It is the goal of this organization to try to make it possible for every institutional Pharmacy Buyer in the country to attend this event, regardless of ability to cover all the expenses.  However, it is truly an educational conference that all hospitals and health care institutions should be able to justify covering all the expenses for their attendees.

Assisting us in this effort this year were companies that supported our grant program: Elite Diamond level, Med-Search; Diamond level, Cardinal Health, PharMEDium Services and Reliance Medical Wholesale; Silver level, Bedford Laboratories, PharmaCorp, and Sandoz.  Please see pages 48-49 of this newsletter, where all displaying Sponsors, including those that sponsored special items, services and activities, are recognized.

The conference started on Monday, August 13, when Summerdale Enterprises, Inc. employees Michael J. W. Thomas, CPhT (also the program moderator), and Francine Morgano oriented the audience on the services provided to pharmacy purchasing experts by the company and its primary resource, Pharmacy Purchasing Outlook newsletter.  From humble beginnings in March of 1994 to its present position in conducting this ever expanding conference for the profession, its growth has been unprecedented.  Subscribers and all attendees were thanked for helping in that expansion process.  Still a relatively small company that hovers around six employees, the newsletter and convention keep things busy at Summerdale, where since May of this year, is residing in new offices on the third floor of an office building on Morena Boulevard just off the main Interstate 5 freeway in San Diego.

Dale Kroll of Summerdale Enterprises, Inc., with the sponsor of the Outstanding Buyer of the Year Award program, Tom McGowan of Acute Care Pharmaceuticals, presented the awards to the top three placing buyers.  All of these buyers were in attendance at this year’s conference.  Award prizes as sponsored by Acute Care Pharmaceuticals were:  1st Place:  $1,000, and a 1-year renewal to PPO; 2nd place:  $500 and a 1-year subscription/renewal to PPO; 3rd Place:  1-year subscription/renewal to PPO.  Tom McGowan, once a Pharmacy Buyer himself, has truly supported our efforts to serve this profession and we acknowledge and thank him and his employees for many years of assistance.

The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners of the year, as selected by an independent panel of judges, were:

1st place:  Carl Whittemore, Pharmacy Purchasing Coordinator, Faxton-St. Luke's Healthcare, Utica, NY

2nd place:  Richard Ponder, CPhT, Pharmacy Inventory Coordinator, East Jefferson General Hospital, Metairie, LA

3rd place:  Debbie Reed, CPhT, Pharmacy Buyer, Munson Medical Center, Traverse City, MI

The Buyer Issues of the Day session was a fairly open ended discussion led by our moderator, Mike Thomas, with heavy participation from attendees who met in small groups, discussing pertinent issues and reporting some of their findings and thoughts about their topics to the entire group.  Topics discussed were: inter-pharmacy communication, GPO and wholesaler issues, inventory management, buyer clinical staff relationships, manufacturer issues, wholesaler reports, want book usage, shortages and backorders, lend/borrow relationships, automation, bar coding, information systems, Pyxis/Omnicell, pedigree, electronic medication administration records, medication reconciliation and a possible buyer organization.  Those who attended were able to speak about such issues.  This will give those who do not attend our conferences a hint of some of the pertinent issues of the day that do come up for discussion at a conference like this.  Buyers buy every day and face most of these issues alone or in a vacuum, but at our convention you can hear various viewpoints on such topics, broadening your knowledge and perspective on l these subjects.

The next session was titled Buyer Leadership Training, with speakers Laura deWolfe, Pharmacy Contract Specialist of Catholic Healthcare West in Phoenix, Arizona, and Carol Goularte, Pharmacy Buyer/Technician III of Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital in Grass Valley, California.  The program included discussion of subjects such as the “Power of Attitude,” “Ownership for the Job You Do,” the “Importance of Integrity, Teamwork, Empowering Others, Developing People Skills and Effective Communication Skills.”

Rounding out the first conference day were break-out sessions, where the major group purchasing organizations (GPO’s), were able to meet with their specific members to discuss contract issues.  An integral part of each year’s conference is the ability of the buyers, who make contract compliance happen for the groups, to meet with those decision makers who negotiate and establish multi-million dollar agreements with the pharmaceutical companies.  Many GPO’s have grown so large they use task forces to seek input from their members.  We however, present an opportunity for buyers in attendance to meet with their GPO representatives, irrespective of task force membership or non-membership.  We hope that attendees who are members of GPO’s that did not have a breakout session at our conference, report to those groups that they missed a significant opportunity to build compliance and support from their buyers, by agreeing to support our conference in exchange for such a breakout session.  Please contact us if you would like to have our GPO materials, which explain the specifics of this trade, to be sent to you or your GPO representative.

After the educational programs were concluded, the buyer attendees were invited to attend an opening dinner reception that was held by Diamond sponsor Med-Search, where a cruise vacation to the Bahamas was raffled off to one of the attending buyers.  This dinner was well attended by participants and it allowed participants to mingle and talk with other Pharmacy Buyers from throughout the country.

Day 2, August 14

“Projecting Future Drug Expenditures and an Approach to Financial Planning for Pharmaceuticals” was presented by James M. Hoffman, PharmD, MS, BCPS, who is the Medication Outcomes Coordinator in the Pharmaceutical Department at Saint Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.  For the past several years he has been one of the primary authors of a publication on prescription drug expenditures that is published each January in the American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy.  Dr Hoffman showed charts of pharmaceutical expenditures and how they impact and compare to other types of health care expenditures.  He identified some of the key potential patent expirations in 2007 and 2008.  He showed a chart which identified the top 15 drug expenditures for hospitals, and said that he expected an inflationary trend in non-federal hospitals to be in a range from 4% to 6%.  He suggested that financial planning for drug expenditures requires data and constant vigilance.  These are just a few of the areas covered by Dr. Hoffman’s presentation.  Attendees found a wealth of data and information in the charts and graphs displayed during his presentation.

Qualifying for those who need pharmacy law credit towards their CE requirements, Sandra Stovall, J.D., C.P.A., of Stovall Consulting, LLC, presented a lecture on “Emerging Pedigree Requirements.”  Sandra is a former Compliance Manager for the Florida Department of Health, Bureau of Statewide Pharmaceutical Services, where she participated in drafting the initial legislative language of the Florida Prescription Drug Protection Act that passed in 2003 with subsequent amendments in 2004 and 2005.  She left the Florida Department of Health in 2006 and now consults on drug regulatory compliance for Stovall Consulting, LLC.  Sandra identified the approach Florida took, and went on to talk about the approaches that other states have taken to address the issue of pedigree requirements for pharmaceuticals.  She also gave an overview of the status of federal legislation regarding pedigrees.

Next, the major drug wholesalers serving our subscribers held break-out sessions to talk to their specific users about various issues the buyers deal with in their day-to-day operations.  Since prime wholesalers are one of the most vital suppliers in the hospital market, buyers always have questions and suggestions for them, so we hope it was a help to all attending.

The afternoon program was led off by Fred Isse, RPh, Operations Manager of Providence Home Infusion in Portland, Oregon, with his presentation, “Drug Shortages: How to Survive with Just-in-Time Inventories.”  The lecture included calculation of inventory turns, how to effectively manage a JIT inventory, backorder definitions in the supply chain, reasons why backorders occur, managing backorders, drug formularies, working with wholesalers, use of alternate wholesalers, therapeutic substitution tools, and the importance of communication for buyers.

A different slant and perspective on pharmacy inventory was provided by Cindy Jeter, CPhT, who spoke on “Inventory Management, A Snapshot in Time,” which focused on the importance of a physical inventory in pharmacy, how to prepare for it, and how to make sure it is accurate and reflects all of the inventory in the pharmacy on the actual day of the physical inventory.  The purpose of a physical inventory is to obtain one true count that can be referred to in order to verify the items you have in stock on a specific date.  This can either be done by the pharmacy staff or an outside service, so both the pros and cons were discussed. 

Preparation for a physical inventory is important, and using the NDC number and its implications, were explained, so that the correct count and price is applied to the correct package size.  Cindy joined McKesson Medication Management as a Corporate Purchasing Manager in July of 2003.  She began her pharmacy career in 1998 when she was Pharmacy Technician at NW Texas Hospital in Amarillo, Texas, and received the “Mickey Cornett Technician of the Year Award” in 2001.

This concluded the educational program of conference day 2.  The Sponsor Displays were then held in the Orleans Arena from 3:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., where food and refreshments were provided to participants. 

Next month, we will review the presentations which took place on August 15 and the non-CE discussions held on August 16.  We thank all participants for making this our best event to date.

Also note that we hope to have an after-conference survey ready for you to take on our website, which we will either announce in the next newsletter mid-October, or on our website just before that time.