Hospital Pharmacy Mobile Shelving Case Study: Globe, Arizona
How Cobre Valley Regional Medical Center added high-density mobile shelving in its pharmacy storage area to gain capacity in an existing room, with no sub-floor construction.
Customer
Cobre Valley Regional Medical Center
Location
Globe, Arizona
Product
High-density mobile shelving
Application
Hospital pharmacy storage
About the project
Cobre Valley Regional Medical Center is a community hospital in Globe, Arizona, serving Gila County and the surrounding rural communities in the Copper Corridor. Its pharmacy department needed more usable storage in space it already had.
Material Handling USA supplied a high-density mobile shelving system for the pharmacy storage area, along with employee lockers for staff use in the same department. The project was coordinated directly with the hospital’s pharmacy leadership and installed with the hospital’s own facilities staff assisting on site.
The situation
A hospital pharmacy stores a wide mix of items, from small boxed medications and unit-dose packaging to bulk supplies and program stock. Every item has to stay organized, findable and controlled, and the volume tends to grow faster than the room around it.
Static shelving spends a large share of a small room on fixed walkways. In a pharmacy that means shelves running out of space long before the room does, with overflow ending up in boxes on the floor or spread into other departments.
The hospital wanted to solve that inside the existing room, without a renovation and without taking the pharmacy out of service for an extended period.
What Material Handling USA supplied
We supplied a high-density mobile shelving system designed for the pharmacy storage area, with shelving arranged so several rows share one moving aisle instead of each row needing its own.
The same shelving family is covered on our mobile shelving for pharmaceutical supplies page, and the drive options are compared on our mechanical-assist mobile shelving page.
Why mechanical-assist shelving fit this pharmacy
Mobile shelving comes in manual, mechanical-assist and electric drive types. This project used mechanical-assist carriages, which move on a geared handle rather than a motor.
That choice fits a hospital pharmacy well. The handle gives staff controlled movement of a fully loaded carriage without needing power to the shelving, so there is no electrical work, no controls to maintain and nothing to fail during a power interruption. In a department that has to keep working through anything, that simplicity is a feature.
A pair of static carriages were included at the ends of the run, giving fixed shelving where a moving unit would not have helped.
No sub-floor, no construction phase
One of the practical questions on any mobile shelving project in an existing building is what happens to the floor. A recessed rail means cutting or building up a sub-floor, which turns a shelving purchase into a construction project.
This system used a twin ramp instead. The rail sits on the existing floor and low ramps carry carts and foot traffic up to shelf level from both approaches, which removed the need for a sub-floor entirely. For an operating hospital, that is the difference between an install measured in days and a renovation measured in weeks.
Anti-tip guide rail was included along the run, and the carriages were shimmed to the existing floor so the system tracks smoothly on a surface that was never poured perfectly level.
Our recessed vs. surface-mounted rail page explains the tradeoff in more detail.
Benefits the pharmacy gained
More capacity in the same room. Sharing one moving aisle instead of several fixed ones converted walkway space into shelf space.
Faster picking. Color-coded sections, dividers and labeled shelves let staff go straight to an item rather than searching a crowded room.
No renovation. The twin ramp system went in on the existing floor, so the pharmacy avoided a sub-floor construction phase.
Order held over time. Fixed shelf locations and labeling keep a pharmacy organized as stock turns over, which is where most storage rooms slowly fall apart.
Staff storage handled too. Lockers gave pharmacy staff a place for personal items in the same project.
How the project ran
The sequence here matches most hospital mobile shelving projects we handle, including sites a long way from a major metro.
Our installation process page covers what to expect from measurement through anchoring.
Serving rural hospitals across Arizona and the Southwest
Material Handling USA has supplied and installed mobile shelving since 1997, including hospital projects well outside major cities. Globe sits about 90 minutes east of Phoenix, and rural hospitals in places like Globe, Safford, Payson and Show Low deal with the same storage math as large urban systems, usually in older and smaller buildings.
Pharmacy storage, central supply, medical records and sterile processing are the four rooms where high-density shelving pays off fastest in a hospital. If your department is out of space and adding square footage is not on the table, mobile shelving is usually the first option worth pricing.
Related reading: mobile shelving for medical records, healthcare storage shelving, and mobile shelving cost and budget drivers.
Call (800) 326-4403 to talk through a hospital pharmacy or supply storage project anywhere in Arizona.
Frequently asked questions
Can mobile shelving be used in a hospital pharmacy?
How much more can a pharmacy store with mobile shelving?
Does a mobile shelving system need floor construction in an existing hospital?
What is mechanical-assist mobile shelving?
Is color-coded shelving worth it in a pharmacy?
Can lockers be included in the same project?
Do you install mobile shelving at rural hospitals?
What do you need to quote a pharmacy shelving project?
Planning pharmacy or hospital supply storage that has run out of room?
Tell us the room you are working with and what it has to hold, and we will lay out a high-density mobile shelving system that fits, including delivery and installation at rural hospital sites.