Design and development of the clinical pharmacy key performance indicators dashboard for equity of service provision at regional and rural hospitals in North Queensland, Australia

Background

Provision of a Medication Action Plan (MAP) on admission and a Discharge Medication Record (DMR) are associated with reduced medication-related harm.

Aim

To report factors associated with the provision of MAPs and DMRs in rural and regional hospitals in Queensland, Australia.

Method

A literature search, environmental scan and department consultations were conducted to develop Clinical Pharmacy Key Performance Indicators (cpKPIs) and design a cpKPI dashboard. Two of the five KPIs included in the dashboard, relating to medication action plans on admission and medication records on discharge, were reported for all the hospitals and were included in the study. A retrospective, period-prevalence study was conducted to evaluate the coverage and equity of clinical pharmacy service provision for patients admitted for longer than 24 h. The proportions of patients who received MAPs and DMRs were stratified by age, gender, Indigeneity and hospital type. Statistical analysis used chi-squared tests and logistic regression in R. This project was exempt due to the local policy requirements that constitute research by the Far North Queensland Human Research Ethics Committee (Reference no: EX/2023/QCH/94383-1684QA). The justification for this exemption is as follows: the project was determined to be negligible risk research and involved the use of existing collection of data or records that contain only non-identifiable data about human beings.

Results

In total, 13 818 patients (37.9% of admissions) received a MAP and 11 631 patients (32.7% of discharges) received a DMR. The proportion of MAPs and DMRs was significantly higher in rural hospitals than in regional hospitals (MAP 50.6% vs 34.6%, DMR 33.1% vs 31.3%) and for male patients than female patients (MAP 42.2% vs 33.7%, DMR 36.4% vs 29.2%). When stratified by age, First Nations patients received a higher proportion of MAPs and DMRs in each age group, except for age 85 years and over. The proportion of First Nations patients aged 50 years and over who received MAP was lower compared to that for non-Indigenous patients aged 65 years and over (56.3% vs 59.8%), whilst the proportion for DMRs was similar (50.4% vs 49.3%).

Conclusion

The study defined the clinical pharmacy key performance indicators for measuring equity of clinical pharmacy service provision in Australia. When adjusted for a difference in life expectancy, the proportion of MAPs for First Nations patients was lower compared to the proportion of MAPs for non-Indigenous patients. Further improvements are required to achieve equity of service provision for First Nations patients and female patients.