Benchmarking hospital clinical pharmacy practice using standardised key performance indicators (KPIs)

Background: Hospital pharmacy services support quality use of medicines and medication safety through clinical pharmacy activities such as medication reviews and patient education. These activities can be measured and monitored using evidence-based and standardised key performance indicators (KPIs), which highlight the value of pharmacy services. Standardisation of KPIs supports long-term benchmarking and inter- and intra-site comparisons to target key areas for improvement in clinical pharmacy services. Aim: To describe the type and frequency of clinical pharmacy activity across five hospitals within one metropolitan hospital district. Methods: Key Performance Indicator data were collected by pharmacists from five hospital sites at one metropolitan hospital district, in Queensland Australia. Data were collected over one week for the following clinical settings: inpatient, discharge, outpatient clinic, and the dispensary. Data were collected using a manual, paper-based data collection tool previously developed using a co-design process. Results: Across 11,215 inpatient encounters, hospital pharmacy services provided: best possible medication history (BPMH) within 24 h of admission: 69.5%; daily medication chart review: 57.2%; discharge education: 82.7%, discharge reconciliation: 88.2%; and provision of discharge medication record: 82.4%. Across 1,092 outpatient encounters, pharmacists documented BPMH for 33.3% of patients. Pharmacists identified a total of 5,009 drug-related problems (DRPs) across the data collection period, with the rate of identification highest in the outpatient clinic setting (64.8 per 100 patient reviews) followed by discharge (52.6 per 100 patient reviews) and then inpatient (48.1 per 100 patient reviews). Almost 20% of DRPs identified (n = 975) were high risk. Conclusion: Reporting and benchmarking clinical pharmacy activity through standardised KPIs supports opportunities to identify service improvements. Future research should focus on larger scale studies using routinely recorded data to monitor clinical pharmacy KPIs across all care settings.