2026 Southeastern Residency Conference

Authors: Derek Rhodes, Tim Walker, Doug Furmanek, Laura Holden, Harry Jozefczyk, Deborah Hurley, Ally Nielson, Natalia Valenti
Background: Productivity is measured as a ratio of an input of work hours to an output of a unit of service. Many health systems rely on traditional metrics such as number of billed doses, order processed or patient days to evaluate staffing needs and operational efficiency. Currently, there is no established gold standard for measuring pharmacy productivity that captures all the activities pharmacists perform. This study aimed to evaluate the accuracy of the current productivity metric of 1000 billed doses and determine whether novel pharmacy workload dashboard metrics provide a more accurate representation of pharmacy workload. 
Methods: A study was conducted across Prisma Health hospitals including a retrospective review comparing historical workload data derived from the external productivity report (1000 billed doses) with pharmacy workload dashboard data through the electronic health record (EHR), which captures both operational and clinical actions. In addition, a prospective survey and time study were performed to estimate time spent on routine operational and clinical pharmacy tasks across multiple facilities.The primary endpoint compares the correlation coefficients between these two units of service: 1000 billed doses versus pharmacy dashboard workload actions.  Secondary objectives include evaluating workload trends between hospitals of varying bed size and clinical service scope using time study data and assessing correlations among different workload categories to identify variations in workload patterns across facilities. Data will be analyzed using correlation analysis and simple linear regression, with multivariable regression modeling as appropriate to identify metrics most predictive hours worked.  
Results: In progress
Conclusions: This study will contribute evidence toward improving pharmacy productivity measurement by assessing whether EHR-based workload metrics better reflect real pharmacist workload and support appropriate staffing allocation.