Medication Infrastructure Innovation in a Hospital Group

Klein Stefan, Schellhammer Stefan

Abstract
Medication supply is a critical infrastructure component in hospitals. For many hospitals, their in- house pharmacy has been the hub, which procured and supplied medication to the wards, controlled quality and provided pharmaceutical advice. Organizational rules, division of tasks and the use of technology enabled, supported and reinforced the hospital pharmacy model. We have studied the case of a hospital group, which decided to establish a centralized medical logistics hub, which provides medication to most of the members of the hospital group according to the negotiated service-level agreements. Thereby, the traditional infrastructure has been drastically reformed and an innovative infrastructure model has been created instead. The purpose of our paper is to reflect this transformation against the background of practice theory, specifically constellation of practices.