The Customer
University of Rochester Medical Center Pharmaceutical Delivery Service
Servicing over 33,000 employees, the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) is located in Rochester, New York, and comprises the university’s primary medical, education, research, and patient care facilities.
Challenges
Delivery Isn’t As Easy As It Seems
URMC is responsible for delivery to 8 major hospitals and the surrounding Rochester, NY, residential region. With such a large service area and critical stop requirements, like time windows, manually planning routes was time-consuming and often resulted in major inefficiencies.
Many Drugs Have an Extremely Short Shelf-Life
Chemotherapy drugs are manufactured in one URMC facility and need to be delivered to other facilities without expiring. Time to expiration quickly becomes enemy #1. If drugs aren’t delivered on-time it creates major issues, going beyond inconvenience, into quality of care and patient outcomes.
The Number of Stops in a Route Matters
URMC found that as the number of stops per route increased, the complexity of the route increased exponentially. Thus, the ability to solve and create efficient routes became harder as the number of stops and stop requirements increased. This led to wasted time required to plan routes that ultimately were not efficient.
“Other” Routing Solutions Couldn’t Handle The Complexity
URMC had tried other route solution providers, from the big name carriers to smaller providers, and found they weren’t able to handle the number of stops or factor in the necessary routing constraints to solve their problems. Route4Me’s partner, Fleetistics, introduced Route4Me to URMC, and URMC hasn’t looked back since.
Route4Me pays for itself every single morning. It’s versatile and so easy to use, plus your support is fantastic!
Merritt Woodward, UofR Mail Services Supervisor
Solution
- Route Optimization
- Mobile App Dispatch
- Planned vs. Actual Reporting
Benefits
350% Reduction in Time Spent Planning Routes
Prior to starting with Route4Me, it took an average of 3 hours per day to plan routes. Now, using Route4Me Route Optimization, URMC can plan all routes in 20 to 30 minutes.
Increasing Patient Outcomes, Care, and Satisfaction
The shelf-life of critical drugs, like those used in chemotherapy, is extremely short. Many drugs require unique care due to temperature degradation and special handling. Using Route4Me, URMC ensures on-time delivery time.
Scaling Growth and Increasing Productivity by 257%
Route4Me enabled URMC to utilize its resources (i.e. staff, vehicles, time, etc) better, and since implementation URMC has added 5 routes to efficiently scale the number of daily deliveries, from 70 to 250+ daily and growing.
At least once a quarter, Verizon & others reach out to me to say “they have routing”… And I’m like “yeah, no, not like Fleetistics & Route4Me you don’t”.
