Project advances health system’s clinical pharmacy services

Abstract

The Sisters of Mercy Health System’s recent initiative to transform its medication-use process was “not all about the technology,” said Kelly L. Turner, pharmacy services manager for the health system, which has hospitals in Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma. In addition to procuring and implementing new technology, she said, a major focus of the initiative, dubbed Mercy Meds, was getting pharmacists “out of the basement” and engaged as part of the care team on patient units. Turner said that while it took some initial effort to educate and sell Mercy’s leadership on the value that clinical pharmacy services add to medication-use safety, administrators and other leaders quickly came on board to support having more pharmacists involved directly in patient care. Before Mercy Meds, she said, few of the health system’s hospitals had pharmacists serving in clinical pharmacy roles. “We had about 0.5 [full-time-equivalent] clinical pharmacist activity per 100 beds,” Turner said. “So that was pretty small. We spent 80% of our time historically on distributive work.”