Purpose: The development of an automated tool to quantify decentralized clinical pharmacists' productivity at a large metropolitan hospital is described.
Summary: From 2008 to 2010, pharmacy administration, clinical pharmacy, and information technology (IT) staff at Regions Hospital in St. Paul, Minnesota, developed a tool to identify, abstract, and report measures of clinical pharmacy productivity. The primary goal was to create automated metrics to accurately and comprehensively collect relevant clinical data without adding to the clinical pharmacy or administrative staff workload. Electronically captured measurable clinical activities were identified by staff, and methods to extract these data from the electronic medical record (EMR) were developed by IT staff using existing EMR variables. These activities included verification of orders, entry of oral orders, discontinuation of orders, patient profile review, preparation of progress notes, reporting of unexpected medication events, and responses to emergency resuscitation codes. Decentralized pharmacists were asked to weigh each activity relative to other activities on the basis of the average time and cognitive skill required to complete a specific intervention. Reports were generated and extracted into a database for data analysis, data graphing, and final-report generation.
Conclusion: Implementation of an automated tool derived from the EMR and developed by clinical and IT staff allowed decentralized clinical pharmacists' activities to be captured electronically and reported quarterly and annually. Weighted metrics enabled the quantification of pharmacists' clinical activities.