Benchmarking Drug Prescribing Using Clinical Databases: A Tool for Practice Model Enhancement

The Director's Forum series is written and edited by Robert Weber and Scott Mark and is designed to guide pharmacy leaders in establishing patient-centered services in hospitals and health systems. This column also addresses many of the key challenges that pharmacy directors face today, while providing information to foster growth in pharmacy leadership and patient safety. This month's Forum focuses on using clinical benchmarking databases. These databases allow the pharmacy director to view and potentially mimic the drug utilization behaviors of peers with superior outcomes. They are also a time-saving tool for drug use evaluations and P&T Committee support. Databases will continue to evolve in the near future, with more clinical parameters (eg, lab values, cultures, and sensitivities) being available for query, as well as an extension of data streams to outpatient settings. With the increased pressure placed on health-system pharmacy directors to contain drug costs and to enhance the pharmacy practice model, pharmacy directors should work to gain familiarity with the clinical database tools available to them and to integrate their use into department operations.