REPORTING • We believe that effective monitoring of clinical pharmacy productivity will help maximize drug therapy and patient outcomes if clinical pharmacy productivity measures are successfully incorporated. Identifying best practices and cost-saving functions that promote improved patient care and outcomes is important to maintaining support and justification for continued clinical services crucial to patient care and preserving the stability of departmental budgets. Are you able to view a report articulating every person who has touched a particular order? Are you able to determine how many orders were processed by each pharmacist? Are you able to determine how many orders were processed by all pharmacists per shift by status? Are you able to determine how many orders were process by location? Can you report on Pharmacist activities?
DocuScripts has built in metrics that allow managers to accurately track the following activities:
- How many orders are processed in a given time period by sending location
- How many orders are processed in a given time period by pharmacist
- Average elapsed time between when an order is placed and when it is completed
STAFFING • Efficiency - With increasing healthcare costs, an aging population, and a shortage of trained personnel it is becoming increasingly important for hospital pharmacy management to make good operational decisions. In the case of hospital inpatient pharmacies, making decisions about staffing and work scheduling is difficult due to the complexity of the systems used and the variation in the orders to be filled. The goal is to find the best schedule to get medications to the patients as quickly as possible by using pharmacy staff effectively.
REDUCTION OF MEDICAL ERRORS • It is estimated that on average, there is at least one medication error per hospital patient per day, although error rates vary widely across facilities. Not all errors lead to injury or death, but the number of preventable injuries that do occurhas been estimated at least 1.5 million each year (NationalAcademies.org). What has your hospital done to prevent medication errors? Do the physicians in your facility prescribe medication orders electronically or via a paper order or both?
Though there are a wide range of concerns in relation to medication safety, there exist a number of practical solutions that can realistically be implemented in any setting (Joint Commission International).
- Better Communication - Improving Communication between the nurses and the pharmacists not only helps to expedite the order process, it allows cooperation between the nursing group and the pharmacists. By allowing the two groups to communicate with Instant Messaging they can quickly and easily get definitive answers to questions with the disruption of a phone call.
- Better Record Keeping - By processing scripts electronically they will be archived electronically. This creates efficiencies in two areas. First, the pharmacists are able to look up orders for earlier in the day, yesterday, last week or last month with a simple click of the mouse. Also, the orders take up no filling cabinet space and do not require anyone to file them or retrieve them.
ELECTRONIC ARCHIVING • By processing scripts electronically they will be archived electronically. This creates efficiencies in two areas. First, the pharmacists are able to look up orders for earlier in the day, yesterday, last week or last month with a simple click of the mouse. Also, the orders take up no filling cabinet space and do not require anyone to file them or retrieve them.