Leveraging drug-utilization and external benchmarking data to drive change in prescribing behaviors.

Purpose: Improved outcomes and cost savings achieved at a large hospital through a drug utilization benchmarking and reporting initiative are described.

Summary: Using the University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC) Clinical Resource Manager (CRM) database, the University of Kansas Hospital identified nine target areas (based on Medicare Severity Diagnosis-Related Group) in which the hospital's drug-utilization practices were deemed suboptimal relative to those of other UHC member facilities with similar caseloads. The pharmacy department developed a CRM template for generating customized reports comparing the hospital's performance on various drug-utilization metrics with that of top-performing peers (i.

Pharmacist-acquired medication histories in a university hospital emergency department.

Purpose: A study was conducted to identify discrepancies between medication histories taken by emergency department (ED) providers (physicians, nurses, and medical students) and medication histories taken by clinical pharmacists.

Methods: During a three-month period, a clinical pharmacist was assigned to the ED in a 475-bed, tertiary care teaching facility that serves as a level I trauma center. On the arrival of a patient, ED providers completed a standard assessment that included the patient's medication history.