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Counting your losses: medicines audits in practice
Author(s) -
Macfarlane John,
Robson Rachel
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
in practice
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.211
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 2042-7689
pISSN - 0263-841X
DOI - 10.1136/inp.d4498
Subject(s) - audit , business , stock (firearms) , accounting , operations management , medicine , marketing , agricultural science , veterinary medicine , economics , engineering , biology , mechanical engineering
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.