ASHP national survey of pharmacy practice in hospital settings: prescribing and transcribing--2004

Results of the 2004 ASHP national survey of pharmacy practice in hospital settings that pertain to prescribing and transcribing are presented.

A stratified random sample of pharmacy directors at 1183 general and children's medical-surgical hospitals in the United States was surveyed by mail. SMG Marketing Group, Inc., supplied data on hospital characteristics; the survey sample was drawn from SMG's hospital database.

The response rate was 41.7%. Compared with the results of the 2001 survey, the number of times pharmacy and therapeutics committees met increased, suggesting an increase in efforts to monitor and manage medication use in hospitals. There was an increase in the use of quality-of-life information to make formulary decisions, indicating a shift away from cost-based formularies. There was a decrease in the rates of formulary compliance, but an increase in the use of evidence-based clinical practice guidelines, suggesting the emergence of more comprehensive approaches to improving prescribing. The use of medication-use evaluations increased in smaller hospitals, suggesting greater use of best practices is occurring in these institutions. The use of drug information services continues to decline, as the use of more efficient and easily accessible online sources of drug information increases. Reading back oral orders to improve accuracy dramatically increased since 2001. The adoption of computerized prescriber-order-entry systems continues to be slow, with fewer than 5% of hospitals reporting their use.

The 2004 ASHP survey results indicate that pharmacists are continuing to improve medication use at the prescribing and transcribing steps of the medication-use system.