Monitoring of pharmacy staffing, workload, and productivity in community hospitals

The purpose of this survey was to identify and characterize pharmacy productivity monitoring systems used in community hospitals that were part of a national group purchasing organization (GPO).

A 50-item questionnaire was developed, pretested, and sent electronically to the directors of pharmacy at 242 member hospitals of Consorta, Inc., a national GPO. The questionnaire was designed to elicit information on (1) hospital pharmacy demographics, (2) systems used to measure hospital pharmacy productivity, and (3) staffing levels and workload. Hospital demographic data were also obtained for respondent and nonrespondent hospitals from the American Hospital Association's AHA Guide. Descriptive statistics, Student's t tests, and chi-square tests were used to characterize the data and compare respondents with nonrespondents.

Responses were received from 110 hospitals (45.5%). No clinically significant differences were found when respondent and nonrespondent hospitals were compared based on AHA Guide data. The productivity workload ratios monitored most often by respondent hospitals were full-time equivalents (FTEs) per adjusted patient day, FTEs per dose dispensed, and FTEs per dose billed. Respondents reported a mean +/- S.D. of 21.90 +/- 18.83 actual FTEs and total doses dispensed, billed, or administered per year of 111,391.4 +/- 111,538.0. A major limitation of the productivity systems used in the hospitals was the inability of the systems to account for clinical services performed by the pharmacy staff.

A survey of community hospitals indicated that although most engaged in productivity monitoring, systems for such measurement often failed to capture all relevant clinical workload data.