A pharmacy intervention program: recognizing pharmacy's contribution to improving patient care

• HIT Description: On-line pharmacy intervention program. More info...
  
• Purpose of Study: Determine most common intervention types performed by pharmacists, and pharmacistsÕ contributions to patient care through an on-line pharmacy intervention program.
  
• Years of study: 1992-1993
  
• Study Design: Cross-sectional
  
• Outcomes: Impact on health care effectivness/quality, Other outcome
  

• Settings: The study was conducted at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, a 565 bed comprehensive cancer center in New York City.
• Intervention: An on-line pharmacy intervention program with different types of interventions performed by a pharmacist.
• Evaluation Method: Measures of the number and types of interventions and their impact on patient care collated and reviewed by a clinical coordinator over a 1-year period.
• HIT System: o The center's pharmacy used the Shared Medical System, to which an on-line pharmacy intervention program was added, and it was accessed through any order entry menu
• Quality of Care and Patient Safety Outcome: Two thousand four hundred ninety-nine interventions were recorded. The most common types of interventions were order clarification/change (18%), pharmacokinetic consult (16%), chart review (13%), restricted drug follow-up (8%), discharge medication screen (7%), initiate drug therapy (6%), drug information (5%), discontinued drug (4%), and therapeutic alternative (4%). There were 3459 impact codes assigned to these interventions. Forty-one percent decreased toxicity, 35% increased efficacy, 17% decreased cost, 16% avoided allergy or drug interaction, 8% improved compliance, and 22% were classified as other.