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Ashley Kader, PharmD, BCPS, manager, pharmacy, Mount Nittany Medical Center, will be virtually presenting as part of the 2020 Premier Breakthroughs Conference and Exhibition. The Breakthroughs Conference and Exhibition is an annual event for Premier members, where more than 4,000 healthcare decision makers and peers from across the United States come together to share ideas and solutions to help transform healthcare. Breakthroughs is an event for healthcare professionals to discover new opportunities to advance innovation and improve outcomes within the healthcare industry.
The 2020 Premier Breakthroughs Conference and Exhibition is focused on sharing the latest clinical, operational and financial innovations, healthcare policy and industry trends. Originally scheduled to be held in June in Nashville, Premier is working to provide opportunities for its members to connect virtually in the coming months, having speakers record their presentations to share with its members due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Kader’s presentation focuses on the use of clinical surveillance systems to improve pharmacy workflow, quality and patient outcomes. Clinical surveillance systems apply analytics to real-time patient data and historical data to pinpoint early signs of issues in work processes, allowing corrective measures to be taken proactively. With the help of such a system, the Medical Center’s pharmacy staff has been able to efficiently transition to a unit-based model and increase services the pharmacy is able to offer.
“I’ve always had the thought to restructure and further expand our pharmacy’s clinical services, and we were able to successfully complete this with the help of our clinical surveillance tool,” shared Kader. “It improved the efficiency of our pharmacy workflow, allowed us to track our medication-related interventions on a daily basis and afforded us the opportunity to obtain a more detailed assessment of all medications for our patients to improve patient outcomes. Although this tool was important, the commitment from our pharmacists and the acceptance of this change from other disciplines was invaluable to the program's success.”
Through a number of workflow adjustments that included the creation of a core pharmacist group and the implementation of unit-based pharmacist meetings, the department was able to make a number of improvements by working more efficiently with the help of the surveillance system, providing more time spent working with patients.
One key advancement resulted in the addition of an average of 30 patients per day that pharmacy staff are now able to proactively evaluate, identifying any needed medication-related interventions.
Kader shares that the main processes addressed during the transition included the restructuring of unit-based workflow to accommodate service additions, determining the best way to capture pharmacists’ interventions through a streamlined process, education and training of staff members, and intervention data collection.
Mount Nittany Health is proud and honored to have Kader represent Mount Nittany Health as part of this national conference, sharing innovative ideas with healthcare leaders across the country to improve efficiencies, quality and outcomes.
