Impact of a Pharmacist on Compliance With Hospital Core Measures

The role of a pharmacist in achieving compliance with hospital core measures is described.

Core measures for hospitals, also known as quality measures, were introduced by the Department of Health and Human Services as an initiative to improve health care through accountability and public disclosure. Hospitals receive financial incentives for compliance with these core measures, but most importantly, these measures ensure that evidence-based therapy is consistently provided to each patient. If a core measure is not met, documentation must be provided to ensure that there is not a failure to meet the measure. Pharmacists were granted the authority to provide core measure documentation in 2007. There are a total of 44 core measures, 22 (50%) of which are medication related and can be documented by a pharmacist. Over a 5-year period, clinical pharmacists have recorded 1281 interventions for core measure documentation. In an analysis of a 1-year period of charts with missing core measure documentation, pharmacists prevented failure to meet the measure in 96% of the cases.

Given the great impact that pharmacists can have on hospital core measure compliance, each hospital's Pharmacy Department should evaluate ways to improve involvement in the quality programs at their hospitals.