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THE IMPACT OF A WARD SATELLITE PHARMACY ON CLINICAL PHARMACY SERVICES AND POTENTIAL COST BENEFIET (submitted in 2019)

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European Statement

Patient Safety and Quality Assurance

Author(s)

Thewodros Leka, iun Grayston, Mashal Kamran, Biljana Markovic

Why was it done?

The Carter report recommended that about 80% of hospital pharmacist time should be spent on the wards to provide clinical pharmacy services. However, in our hospital’s surgical specialty at the time of this report, it was found that only 33% of pharmacist’s time was spent on clinical pharmacy services. This had a negative impact on:
• rate of medication errors and near misses
• supply of critical medicines
• pharmacist participation in productive ward rounds
• timely discharge of patients home

What was done?

The Pharmacy department made a successful business case to the Hospital executives to open a Satellite pharmacy to serve 4 surgical wards. The proposal was to recruit a dedicated clinical pharmacist and Medicines Management Technician, and set-up a dispensing satellite pharmacy.

How was it done?

The business case indicated that if funded, the new satellite pharmacy team would: • improve clinical pharmacy key performance indicators • improve patient safety • deliver a potential cost benefit Funding limitation was an obstacle and we have to convince the board.

What has been achieved?

We achieved 60−90% improvement in the objectives set in the business case as illustrated in Table 1 and 2. The pharmacy team won the annual quality improvement award of 2018. Table 1: Clinical Pharmacy Service improvement Clinical pharmacy services Service rate pre-satellite pharmacy Service rate post satellite pharmacy % of service improvement Medication errors 16/month 6/month 63% Pharmacist interventions 20/month 80/month 75% Pharmacist participation in ward round 6/month 50/month 88% Time to dispense discharge summaries 90 minutes/discharge summary 20 minutes/discharge summary 77% Number of patients counselled 15/month 75/month 80% Pharmacist available in the ward 1.5 hrs/day 7.5 hrs/day 80% Time taken to supply critical medicines 1 hour 5 minutes 91% Table 2: Potential Cost-benefit savings achieved Activities Cost-benefit savings/year (€) Reducing length of stay of patients €17,000 Reducing repeat dispensing €16,000 Effective use of nursing time €11,000 Reducing prescribing errors €103,000 Total Savings €147,000.

What next?

• Weekend working.
• Service improvements can be transferred to acute medical units and downstream medical wards. Reference Carter report.

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