Cycle Counts

Created August 25, 2026

Responsible departments

• Inventory Management (Erica, Sonni)
• Pharmacy techs / ERA supervisors / ERAs (as assigned support)

Documents - Instinct Go Live

• AAH Instinct Go-Live Count Sheet — go-live Thu 10/22
• LMAH Instinct Go-Live Count Sheet — go-live Mon 10/26
• CRAH Instinct Go-Live Count Sheet — go-live Wed 10/28

Purpose

Cycle counts let us continuously verify that each hospital's on-hand pharmacy inventory matches what the PIMS (Cornerstone or Impromed) says we have — catching data-entry mistakes, miscounts, and shrinkage early, instead of waiting for a full annual inventory count to find out our numbers are wrong.

Context

Scope — pharmacy items only

This SOP covers what sells through the pharmacy: medications (tablets, capsules, oral liquids and suspensions, topicals, otics, ophthalmics), supplements and nutraceuticals, exotic support foods (Critical Care, Emeraid, Harrisons, KMR, Esbilac, Nutrical), behavior products, and ZenCollars.

Not included: injectables (except Vetsulin, which is counted at all three hospitals), white goods, and treatment supplies — including medical and avian collars, dental home care, syringes, and sharps containers. Those are counted under their own processes.

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Also excluded: prescription diets, which are counted weekly under their own SOP; and DEA-scheduled orals — tramadol, hydrocodone, oral buprenorphine — which are counted on the controlled log. Gabapentin stays in the cycle count: it is not federally scheduled, and it is the highest-volume pharmacy item we carry.

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The weekly count schedule

Each hospital's pharmacy items are ranked by units moved — not dollar sales. Units is what surfaces miscounts and shrinkage on the fast movers. That ranking sorts every item into four tiers. Tiers A, B and C are the weekly count — 20 items. Tier D is the slow tail and is swept once a year, not weekly.

• Tier A — ranks 1–5: counted every week. Our highest-velocity pharmacy items, so their counts drift fastest.
• Tier B — ranks 6–20 (15 items): 5 counted each week — whichever 5 were counted longest ago. That works out to every Tier B item roughly every 3 weeks, and at least once a month.
• Tier C — items that moved more than 50 units in the sales period: 10 counted each week — whichever 10 were counted longest ago. Sized so a full pass lands inside 13 weeks — every Tier C item counted at least once a quarter.
• Tier D — everything else that moved 50 units or fewer, plus anything that moved zero: not in the weekly count. Swept once a year in a single pass, alongside the annual inventory. A variance on an item that moves twice a month is not worth a weekly slot.

That's 20 items per hospital per week (5 + 5 + 10). Count frequency scales with how often an item moves: Tier A weekly, Tier B monthly, Tier C quarterly, Tier D annually.

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Why there is a Tier D. At 20 items a week, Tier A's 5 weekly repeats leave only 15 rotating slots — 195 counts a quarter. Lone Mountain has 310 items below Tier A, so counting all of them quarterly is arithmetically impossible at this weekly load; a full pass would take 21 weeks. The 50-unit cut solves it honestly: 126 items in Tier C is a genuine 13-week pass, and the 169 slowest items move to an annual sweep rather than a quarterly promise nobody can keep. The cut point is per hospital — set each one's Tier C at the top 130 items so 10 a week still closes in 13 weeks.

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PIMS differs by hospital

Aliante uses Cornerstone; Craig Road and Lone Mountain use Impromed. Looking up the current quantity on hand and correcting a count uses different steps in each system — both are covered in the Procedure below.