Counting your losses: medicines audits in practice

It has been estimated that shrinkage of veterinary purchases – that is, the difference between what is bought and sold – is in the order of 5 to 10 per cent. XLVets' key performance indicator data suggest that medicines sales per vet by sector are £81,500 (small animal), £147,000 (farm animal) and £44,500 (equine); 10 or even 5 per cent of these amounts would create a significant loss to the bottom line of any business. The only way of revealing the true extent of these losses in your practice is to conduct a full medicines audit, and this must be adopted as a regular feature of stock management. In this article, John Macfarlane and Rachel Robson describe how to carry out a medicines audit.