Why a Quality Pharmacy Matters

Why a Quality Pharmacy Matters

When you're not feeling well, you rely on your physician and pharmacy to prescribe and deliver the right dose of the right information at the right time. Health Spectrum Pharmacy Services is staffed by pharmacists and professionals you can trust. They use the newest computer technology to make sure you receive the medication you need when you need it.

Health Spectrum Pharmacy includes:

• Retail pharmacies offering prescription services, over-the-counter medication and home medical equipment. Retail pharmacies are located at LVH—Cedar Crest, LVH—17^th and Chew, and LVH—Muhlenberg.
• A home infusion pharmacy delivering supplies directly to a patient’s home when home-based care is needed. Home infusion offers therapies for hydration, chemotherapy, hemophilia, pain management, anti-infection, corticosteroids and TPN (total parenteral nutrition), along with various specialty therapies.

Our colleagues are experienced

Our retail pharmacies features:

• 5 full-time pharmacists with more than 60 years combined experience at LVH—Cedar Crest
• 1 full-time and two part-time pharmacists with 41 years combined experience at LVH—17^th and Chew
• 2 full-time pharmacists with 45 years combined experience at LVH—Muhlenberg

• 4 full-time pharmacists and 1 administrator with more than 50 years combined experience
• Nurses who are certified in inserting PICC (peripherally inserted central catheter) lines and IV (intravenous) lines for delivering treatments

• Our home infusion pharmacy is accredited through The Joint Commission (TJC)
  
• Every pharmacist obtains at least 30 continuing education credits every two years.
• Home infusion pharmacists attend the National Home Infusion Association’s yearly conference to learn the latest in care.
• A home infusion pharmacist works directly with Lehigh Valley Hospital as a liaison between the nurses and physicians. He educates new hospice nurses and provides pain management education to current hospice nurses.
• Home infusion pharmacy nurses are CRNI (Certified Registered Nurses Infusionist) and attend the Infusion Nurses Society yearly conference to stay up to date with current practice techniques and technology.

We’re serving more patients

Patients served by our retail pharmacy, 2003-05

• 2003 – 171,928
• 2004 – 199,594
• 2005 – 231,232

Patients served by our home infusion pharmacy, 2003-05

• 2003 – 2,898
• 2004 – 3,062
• 2005 – 3,260

We ask you to rate us

You have a voice. Through regular surveys, we ask you to rate the quality of our retail pharmacy services. Here’s how you rate us. Much like in grade-school, a perfect score is 100 percent. A 90 percent or better is an ‘A’.

LVH—Cedar Crest retail pharmacy Score

LVH—17^th and Chew Streets retail pharmacy

LVH—Muhlenberg retail pharmacy

We’re constantly making our services better

• We compare the quality of our pharmacy care to other hospitals to see how we measure up. To do this, we use a database provided by Strategic Health Care Programs.
• We’re continually making our services better with projects aimed at improving our already high quality of care.

Results of our performance improvement projects

Patient Satisfaction (ranked on a scale of 1-5; higher is better)

Overall score

• Health Spectrum: 4.95
• National average: 4.85

Score for likelihood of recommending pharmacy services

• Health Spectrum: 4.9
• National average: 4.87

Delayed or Missed Infusion Dosages (ranked per 1,000 service days; a lower score is better)

• 2004 Health Spectrum Average: .57
• 2005 Health Spectrum Average: .19
• 2005 national average: .16

We’ve made significant progress in decreasing the number of missed doses for two consecutive years and are refining our procedures to get our numbers below the national average.

Adverse Drug Reactions (ranked per 1,000 service days; a lower score is better)

• 2004 Health Spectrum Average: .25
• 2005 Health Spectrum Average: .28
• 2005 national average: .16

All adverse drug reactions were minor in nature. Health Spectrum patients are often dealing with more complex illnesses than the average hospital pharmacy. In terms of complexity of illness, our average score is 1.13; the national average is .9.

Number of Bloodstream Infections (ranked per 1,000 service days; a lower score is better)

• 2004 Health Spectrum Average: .25
• 2005 Health Spectrum Average: .17
• 2005 national average: .11

In fiscal year 2005 (June 2004-July 2005), Health Spectrum Pharmacy saw 1,577 patients. Of those patients, six experienced a bloodstream infection. We have improved our scores and are increasing patient-family education and follow-up to help reduce this number to as low as possible.

Number of Medication Errors (ranked per 1,000 service days; a lower score is better)

• 2004 Health Spectrum Average: .04
• 2005 Health Spectrum Average: .00
• 2005 national average: .04

We’ve achieved better results than the national average for three consecutive years.

Noncompliance Resulting in Discharge (ranked per 1,000 service days; a lower score is better)

• 2004 Health Spectrum Average: .89
• 2005 Health Spectrum Average: .00
• 2005 national average: .47

A patient discharge for noncompliance did not occur in the past year.

Discharges Due to Therapy-Related Complications (ranked per 1,000 service days; a lower score is better)

• 2004 Health Spectrum Average: .32
• 2005 Health Spectrum Average: .63
• 2005 national average: .95

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