Practice-enhancing publications about the medication-use process in 2020

Disclaimer In an effort to expedite the publication of articles, AJHP is posting manuscripts online as soon as possible after acceptance. Accepted manuscripts have been peer-reviewed and copyedited, but are posted online before technical formatting and author proofing. These manuscripts are not the final version of record and will be replaced with the final article (formatted per AJHP style and proofed by the authors) at a later time. Purpose This article identifies, prioritizes, and summarizes published literature on the medication-use process (MUP) from calendar year 2020 that can impact health-system pharmacy daily practice. Summary The MUP is the foundational system that provides the framework for safe medication utilization within the healthcare environment. The MUP is defined in this article as having the following components: prescribing/transcribing, dispensing, administration, and monitoring. Articles evaluating at least one step of the MUP were assessed for their usefulness in practice improvement. A PubMed search for articles published in calendar year 2020 was conducted in January 2021 using targeted Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) keywords, and the table of contents of selected pharmacy journals was searched, providing a total of 9,433 articles. A thorough review identified 49 potentially practice-enhancing articles: 15 for prescribing/transcribing, 10 for dispensing, 6 for administration, and 18 for monitoring. Ranking of the articles for importance by peers led to the selection of key articles from each category. The highest-ranked articles are briefly summarized, with a mention of why they are important within health-system pharmacy. The other articles are listed for further review and evaluation. Conclusion It is important to routinely review the published literature and to incorporate significant findings into daily practice. This article assists in identifying and summarizing the most impactful recently published literature. Health-system pharmacists have an active role in improving the MUP in their institution, and awareness of the moist significant published studies can assist in changing practice at the institutional level.

Lean into Clinical Pharmacy: An Experience in Implementing Key Performance Indicators and Gemba Walks into Clinical Pharmacy Services

Purpose: The Lean methodology was applied to clinical metrics by a critical care pharmacy team. The experiences associated with the development and implementation of clinical metrics and their impact on daily workflow are described. Summary: The Lean methodology has been introduced into the healthcare system as a means of process improvement, which can eliminate waste through appropriate medication utilization. At OhioHealth Riverside Methodist Hospital, the department of pharmacy was tasked with the development of clinical metrics after a health system wide Gemba walk was initiated. The pharmacy department's critical care team developed a strategy identifying and evaluating clinical metrics pertaining to their everyday workflow. Each clinical metric was evaluated in accordance with a pre-defined goal. Metrics requiring heavy documentation and those in which the pharmacist does not have autonomous authority to manage were often challenging to implement and were less successful. Throughout this process, the lessons learned focused on generating ideas that were easily documented, evidence-based, and department specific. The critical care team discovered that the outcome of the most successful metrics highlighted clinical pharmacist value and data generated could be used to support funding for additional resources. Conclusion: The critical care pharmacy team developed a streamlined process to implement clinical metrics as means of identifying areas for improvement using the Lean methodology.

110. MRSA nasal swab as a stewardship tool to guide IV Vancomycin in diabetic foot infections

Background The Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA) guidelines suggest empiric Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) coverage for Diabetic Foot Infection (DFI) with a history of MRSA infection, if local prevalence is high, or if the infection is severe. However, data suggests that there is overutilization of vancomycin in this population and this medication is associated with toxicity. MRSA nasal screen has a high negative predictive value (NPV) for ruling out MRSA in pneumonia and other sites. We performed a medication utilization evaluation (MUE) for Vancomycin IV in DFI patients who had an MRSA nares screen to determine our own NPV of this test and feasibility to use it as an antibiotic stewardship program (ASP) tool to guide vancomycin use in this population. Methods We retrospectively reviewed 224 patients from January 2015 to January 2020 who had a diagnosis of DFI and an MRSA nasal screen. 139 patients had cultures done. For the NPV, we excluded patients who had any MRSA positive culture or screen up to a year from admission (Figure 1). Figure 1. Flowchart from our medication utilization evaluation showing patient’s distribution by MRSA-screen result Results We found 148 (66%) patients with DFI who had received IV vancomycin empirically during the admission and 196 of them were MRSA-nares negative (Figure 2). The average days of therapy (DOT) in the MRSA-nares negative patients was 5.2 days vs 4.8 in the MRSA-nares positive patients. Out of the 139 patients with a negative MRSA nasal swab, 124 had no MRSA in cultures, yielding an NPV of 89%. If we considered only the deep cultures, the NPV increased to 90%. Figure 2. Number of patients who received IV vancomycin grouped by MRSA-screen result Conclusion We identified overutilization of IV vancomycin in patients with a diagnosis of DFI in our institution. Also, our NPV of the MRSA-nasal screening to rule out MRSA infection in DFI was high at 89% similar to previous studies. Based on these findings, we plan to implement a local ASP protocol (Figure 3) using MRSA nasal swab screen to decrease the empiric use of vancomycin. The results of these efforts will be analyzed and published in future iterations with the hopes to share this knowledge to reduce the use of IV vancomycin in this population in other centers. Figure 3. Protocol draft to be used as an ASP tool to guide IV vancomycin de-escalation based on MRSA-nasal screen for DFI patients Disclosures All Authors: No reported disclosures