Abstract:
Managing stock effectively is important for any organization. Managing pharmaceutical products and materials up to their point of use in health facilities is an important task in order to provide quality healthcare. Without adequate pharmacy inventory management practices, hospitals run the risk of not being able to provide patients with the most appropriate medication when it is most needed. The General objective of the study was to assess Inventory management practices for pharmaceutical items at health facilities in Addis Ababa. The study population comprised of both government and private hospitals in Addis Ababa. Simple random sampling techniques were applied to select a sample size of 30 hospitals where inventory management was mostly carried out and purposive sampling to select head pharmacist and store keeper those involved directly on inventory management at the facility. The study used both primary data and secondary data that were collected through a semi-structured questionnaire, observation check list & interview for quantitative and qualitative analysis. Out of the 60 questionnaires that were distributed 53 questionnaires were filled and returned successfully. This represents a response rate of 88.4% percent. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics. The study found that majority of hospitals are not effective in practicing the major inventory control techniques such as having essential medicine list, using established formula to determine facility resupply, establishing optimized stock level techniques such as Maximum, Minimum, safety stock and reorder level, ABC analysis and VEN analysis. Finally from the study it can be concluded that the main challenges of the hospital in managing inventory are: sufficient storage area to store all the needed products, lack of technology in inventory control and lack of proper training of inventory management and supply chain is the main challenge that almost all facility faced. In general, stock out of essential medicine and expiration is a result of poor inventory control as a consequence. Based on these findings, the study recommends that implementation of scientific inventory control techniques, use of technologies and training for better management of inventories as these reduced associated cost related to wastage and improve quality health care delivery.