Rebuilding the clinical and operational acute care pharmacist productivity model: Leveraging electronic health record data and analytics at an academic medical center

Abstract

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Purpose: Acute care pharmacy practice continues to evolve, and useful pharmacist productivity models should reflect contemporary practice. The purpose of this project was to rebuild an acute care pharmacist productivity model to accurately capture and categorize the variable workload of acute care generalists and specialists using electronic health record (EHR) data reports and analytic capabilities.

Summary: The acute care pharmacist productivity model was rebuilt with 5 variable workload drivers, including order verification, medication preparation verification (product check), clinical scoring, pharmacist-documented progress notes, and pharmacy intensity score-weighted patient admissions and patient days. Reports from the EHR database were used to capture all workload drivers. For each variable workload driver, more granular categories included in the reports were assigned time standards based on the work's complexity. Work output data, represented as units of service, were mapped by the user's job title (ie, generalist or specialist) and by the inpatient department.

Conclusion: The rebuilt pharmacist productivity model leverages EHR data and standard documentation of patient care activities to capture workload and reflect clinical practice. The EHR-generated reports enabled construction of a comprehensive and sustainable productivity model for acute care pharmacists without the need for additional manual documentation for productivity purposes.