Chemotherapy Orders Team: A non-traditional operational and clinical support team enhancing order set development and implementation.

ObjectiveOncology treatment regimens require increasing information technology (IT) integration in health systems to enhance delivery and safety, however, this creates a burden on medical teams and clinical pharmacists to manage. This primer introduces the University of Michigan Health Academic Medical Center's (UMH-AMC) response to this need with the Chemotherapy Orders Team (COT).SummaryThe COT includes five clinical oncology pharmacy generalists with a split full-time equivalent (FTE) appointment in COT-based activities and staffing in infusion. They manage the clinical content of oncology and non-oncology treatment and therapy plans at UMH-AMC, including over 1330 commercial plans and over 260 investigational plans. The COT ensure compliance with national and regulatory guidelines for order sets. This involves leaning on order group standardization to improve the efficiency of treatments across multiple disease states. The COT has been instrumental in managing the compounding standards for all infusion agents, including support to the electronic health record (EHR) team.ConclusionThe COT is an innovative team of clinical pharmacist infusion generalists, providing non-traditional clinical and operations support. They work alongside medical teams, pharmacy operations, and health informatics to provide robust management of EHR pathways for oncology and non-oncology related therapies. Importantly, they act as a translational liaison between the clinical teams and the EHR. Their efforts to modernize and improve the treatment and therapy plan experience at UMH-AMC has been an ongoing exercise, with many improvements in order set standardization and communication.