Keep expired medicines off your dispensary counter
For dispensaries with their own medicine shelf. , 7 minute read.
Most dispensaries do not have a stock problem until the night they reach for amoxicillin and find an empty box, or a patient points out that the strip they were given expired last month. Both come from the same gap: the shelf is counted rarely and expiry dates live on the boxes, not in a list.
Record stock by batch, not just by drug
Knowing you have 400 paracetamol tablets is not enough. You need to know that 100 of them expire in March and 300 in November. Each delivery from a supplier is a batch: write down the drug, the quantity, the expiry date on the box and what you paid.
It takes a minute per delivery and it is the only way to know what will expire before you sell it.
Issue the batch that expires first
Pharmacists call it “first expiry, first out”. When a new delivery arrives, put it behind the stock already on the shelf, and always issue from the front. It sounds obvious, but in a busy evening the newest box is often the one on top.
MyClinic does this in the records too: when a medicine is issued, it is taken from the batch with the nearest expiry date that has not yet expired, so your stock list matches the shelf.
Set a reorder level for the medicines you issue every day
For the forty or fifty items you issue every day, decide the quantity at which you reorder. A simple rule: how many you issue in a normal week, plus a few days’ worth for the time a supplier takes to deliver.
Check the list of items below their level once a week, on the same day, before you call your supplier. MyClinic shows these as low-stock alerts on the dispensary page.
Look ahead at expiry dates every month
- Once a month, list everything that expires in the next 60 to 90 days.
- Move those batches to the front of the shelf and use them first.
- For slow-moving items, ask the supplier whether they take back short-dated stock, or order smaller quantities next time.
- Take anything already expired off the shelf the same day and record it, so it cannot be issued by mistake.
MyClinic will not issue a batch past its expiry date, and it lists expired and soon-to-expire batches on the dispensary page so the monthly check takes a few minutes.
Count once a quarter
Even with good records, the shelf and the list drift apart: a strip given without a bill, a box damaged in the rain. Count the shelf against the list every three months and correct the differences. If the same items are always short, that is worth looking into.