INITIAL SUCCESS AND SUBSTANTIAL GOVERNMENT SAVINGS MAY MANDATE PRIME VENDOR CONTRACTS FOR TABLE OF ORGANIZATION AND EQUIPMENT UNITS AND DEPLOYMENT SUPPORT

In November 1994, the Department of Pharmacy at Madigan Army Medical C enter and the 62nd Medical Group Logistics (Fort Lewis, Washington) ex amined the feasibility of prime vendor support for the 18th Mobile Arm y Surgical Hospital in a Table of Organization and Equipment (TOE) uni t rapid deployment. The TOE medication list was deemed to be out of da te and a state-of-the-art formulary was developed, By identifying thre e National Drug Code bioequivalent substitutes for each National Stock Number, a 94% prime vendor match was achieved for pharmaceuticals fro m the new formulary serving as our template, The 6% of medications tha t were not able to be matched consisted of items deemed as military-un ique or items not covered by the prime vendor government contracts wit h wholesalers, On August 7, 1995, a trial was conducted to determine w hether the local prime vendor had the capacity to support a deployment under its present contract with Madigan Army Medical Center. Two hund red eighty-six line items were ordered, mocking the deployment of two medical units. More than 95% of the line items were filled within 5 da ys from the local prime vendor, Under the local contract, the prime ve ndor was under no obligation to have out-of-stock medications provided by overnight shipment from other national distribution sites. This ad vantage, which is standard in national pharmaceutical prime vendor con tracts negotiated by large civilian group purchasing organizations, wo uld have substantially decreased the period of time to attain a >95% f ill, The results of this trial have provided strong support for prime vendor utilization in future deployments.