ASHP national survey of pharmacy practice in hospital settings: Monitoring and patient education—2015

PURPOSE: The results of the 2015 ASHP national survey of pharmacy practice in hospital settings are presented. METHODS: A stratified random sample of pharmacy directors at 1432 U.S. general and children's medical-surgical hospitals were surveyed using a mixed-mode method. IMS Health supplied data on hospital characteristics; the survey sample was drawn from IMS's hospital database. RESULTS: The survey response rate was 22.7%. Since the 2000 survey, the proportion of hospitals reporting that pharmacists monitor at least 75% of patients has increased from 20.3% to 57.8%. The use of therapeutic drug monitoring has increased from 63.0% to 70.6% since the 2012 survey. The percentage of hospitals reporting that pharmacists have primary responsibility for discharge counseling has increased from 1.2% to 7.3% since the 2012 survey, with 33.8% of hospitals reporting pharmacist counseling of at-risk patients. Virtually all hospitals (97.5%) have partially or completely implemented electronic health records; most have computerized prescriber-order-entry (84.1%) and barcode-assisted medication administration (93.7%) systems. At an increasing percentage of hospitals (86.2% in the 2015 survey), medication orders are reviewed by a pharmacist before a dose is made available and administered to a patient. CONCLUSION: The role of pharmacists in measuring, monitoring, and managing medication use in health systems continues to be significant, important, and growing. The evolution of electronic health information and technologies that make this information more readily available to patients is transforming healthcare in a positive way and enabling pharmacists to more efficiently contribute to improving medication use.