Benchmarking in health-system pharmacy: experience at Glens Falls Hospital

The experience of Glens Falls Hospital (GFH) with the Benchmarking Program coordinated by The Clinical Pharmacokinetics Laboratory at Millard Fillmore Hospital is described. GFH, a community hospital in upstate New York with 442 licensed beds, serves a patient population drawn from a five-county area. In 1998, GFH developed a multidisciplinary pharmacy task force charged with generating strategic initiatives for curtailing drug costs. Proposals for various programs, including specific goals, were developed with the aid of trends reported in the individual hospital reports provided by the Benchmarking Program. The data obtained through these reports helped GFH's pharmacy staff establish goals for the appropriate use of many agents, including vancomycin, and allowed GFH to assess the impact of its initiatives through comparisons with similar hospitals across the United States. In 1995, vancomycin expenditures at GFH substantially exceeded those for benchmark hospitals of similar types, but, with the implementation of new vancomycin guidelines aimed at reducing inappropriate use in 1996, the difference was eliminated. The individual hospital reports generated by the Benchmarking Program provide valuable data that can be used to assess pharmacy performance, set drug expenditure goals, and design programs to reduce antimicrobial resistance.