Key performance indicators for clinical pharmacy services in New Zealand public hospitals: stakeholder perspectives

Abstract

Objective To identify a set of measurable key performance indicators (KPIs) demonstrating hospital clinical pharmacy's contribution to patient care that can be used for benchmarking in the New Zealand setting. Methods Data sources were key stakeholders from public hospitals in each of the 21 District Health Boards in New Zealand. Surveys with selected KPIs thought to represent clinical pharmacy's contribution to patient care were sent to the Chief Pharmacist, Chief Medical Officer, Director of Nursing, senior management team and Quality and Risk Manager of each District Health Board, who were asked to rate each KPI based on relevance to clinical pharmacy's contribution to patient care and ease of measurement in their organisation. Mailed survey data were ranked and analysed using Microsoft Excel and SPSS. Key findings The response rate was 43%. The top two ranked KPIs were concerning chart review and medication reconciliation. Only three of 52 KPIs were rated ‘easily’ measurable. No statistically significant differences were seen between professional groups or hospital sizes. Conclusions The top ranked KPIs reflected the pharmacist's central role in improving the individual patient's medicines use. Measurability appeared to be a major issue due to resource constraints. This study has provided the platform for future nationwide hospital clinical pharmacy KPIs.

Development of Clinical Pharmacy Key Performance Indicators for Hospital Pharmacists Using a Modified Delphi Approach

“…22 Although the initial phase of this study required systematic development of cpKPIs by a Delphi panel of 3 pharmacists, the main focus was stakeholder feedback on the relevance and measurability of 52 KPIs. In contrast, our study utilized an expert panel of 26 hospital pharmacists representing frontline hospital pharmacists, hospital pharmacy leaders, and academia.…”

Stakeholder views do matter: a conceptual framework for medication safety measurement

“…The observation that people conceptualise in different ways or have different priorities and preferences for data is not new . However, understanding what these differences are within a medication safety measurement context has not previously been canvassed and articulated.…”

Pharmacy Practice Research Methods

“…Replication of the aforementioned community pharmacy-based studies could be undertaken within the hospital pharmacy sector (Scahill 2012a, b). Although some work has been undertaken to determine performance indicators for clinical pharmacy services (Ng and Harrison 2010), little work has been undertaken to demonstrate what an effective hospital pharmacy might look like, from a multi-stakeholder viewpoint. Little work has also been done to explore the organisational culture of hospital pharmacy (Scahill 2012a, b) and how different patterns of culture might influence the functioning and therefore the performance of different hospital pharmacies.…”