Pharmacists Prevent Medication Errors and Save Money Through Clinical Interventions

Pharmacy OneSource, Inc., software as a service provider to more than 1,000 hospitals in the United States, announced today that its Quantifi clinical documentation program continues to be successful in helping clients show cost savings, establish benchmarks and trend clinical and quality pharmacy activities. Pharmacy OneSource has 29,118 users currently documenting in Quantifi who have recorded more than $88 million in cost savings in the second quarter of 2008.

"Since going live in July 2006 with Quantifi, pharmacy has multiplied its clinical event reporting by 20-fold across seven of our hospitals. Between March and June last year, MedStar pharmacists documented almost 16,000 patient-specific events, for a savings of $800,000, according to literature-based estimates." said Bonnie Levin, Corporate Assistant Vice President of Pharmacy Services for MedStar Health.

Quantifi users documented 1,680,086 interventions last quarter, which were associated with $8,139,570 actual dollar and $80,075,648 in risk avoidance savings by pharmacists through intervention. Real reduction in supply costs (such as a switch from atorvastatin to simvistatin) is an example of actual dollar savings; where avoided potential costs (an adverse drug event or an extended length of stay) represent risk avoidance savings.

Here are the Top Five Drugs associated with an adverse drug reaction recorded in Quantifi last quarter, and the total number of reports for each:

Warfarin 1620
Morphine Sulfate 480
Insulin Preparations 438
Hydromorphone 339
Vancomycin 281

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