Case Study: Mercy Philadelphia Hospital 2019 HAP Achievement Award
Awarded for: Pharmacist-driven Vancomycin Monitoring Initiative
In Safe Hands
Medium Organizations
The goal: Implement pharmacist-driven monitoring and dosage recommendations to reduce the number of patients experiencing toxicity in the kidneys resulting from the administration of the antibiotic vancomycin.
The rollout of this pharmacist-driven initiative included:
- Educational in-service about vancomycin therapy dosing and monitoring for all pharmacists
- Updates to the hospital-wide empiric dosing protocol
- Dedication of time for the monitoring process as part of the daily pharmacist workflow and schedule
- On-going clinical support for pharmacists
Results: Data suggests an encouraging downward trend in kidney toxicity after instituting the monitoring initiative. Specifically:
- An increase in the percentage of patients who had their vancomycin levels monitored
- A significant rise in the percentage of patients reaching target vancomycin levels (16% pre-monitoring compared to 60.3% post)
- A reduction in the percentage of patients showing increased kidney toxicity (11% pre-monitoring compared to 5.6% post)
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Topics: Population Health, Quality Initiatives
Revision Date: 9/1/2019
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