AHRQ Director Touts Benefits of Emergency Pharmacists

Cheryl A. Thompson

BETHESDA, MD, 15 July 2008—Hospital emergency departments should consider implementing more emergency pharmacist programs as a means to reduce costs and improve patient safety, the head of the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) recently suggested.

Writing in the May/June issue of the American Journal of Medical Quality, AHRQ Director Carolyn M. Clancy noted that a "systems approach" is needed to reduce adverse drug events (ADEs).

"As the evidence of the cost and quality benefits of [emergency pharmacists] continues to grow, we must work together to implement more of these important safety-enhancing programs," she wrote.

Clancy, in her commentary, said health care organizations that have hired full-time emergency pharmacists have reported "significant cost savings, fewer ADEs, shorter lengths of stay, and overall improvements in quality of care."

She described two new initiatives to help pharmacists and hospitals obtain support for and implement emergency pharmacist programs: the Emergency Pharmacist Mentoring Program, which was launched at the 2007 ASHP Summer Meeting; and a tool kit created by physician Rollin J. Fairbanks of the University of Rochester's Department of Emergency Medicine, in New York.

The mentoring program, part of ASHP's Patient Care Impact Program, connects teams of emergency department pharmacists with pharmacists who want to develop these practices in their own hospitals.

Fairbanks's tool kit is accessible from The Emergency Pharmacist Research Center, whose research is supported by AHRQ.

The American Journal of Medical Quality is the official journal of the American College of Medical Quality.