CONTINUOUS PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT

To encourage the pharmacy workforce to establish multidisciplinary continuous performance improvement (CPI) processes within their practice settings to assess the effectiveness and safety of patient care services, adherence to standards, and quality and integrity of practice; further,

To encourage the pharmacy workforce to use contemporary CPI techniques and methods for ongoing improvement in their services; further,

To support the pharmacy workforce in their development and implementation of CPI processes.

Rationale

Pharmacy departments should continually strive for medication safety and quality by identifying and prioritizing quality improvement efforts that align with national and health-system goals. The pharmacy workforce can make use of a variety of methods to ascertain goals, aims, and interventions for the system and to influence medication-related goals, aims, and interventions in the pursuit of high-value care and improved patient outcomes. Some of these process improvement methodologies include Six Sigma, Lean Management, Lean Six Sigma, Agile Management, Total Quality Management, and Kaizen. All the process improvement tools share many common features and the philosophy that processes can always be improved. They share the assumption of measurement and statistics being a key to improvement and the faith in the power of the workers closest to a process to be able to improve it. The continuous performance or quality improvement program is structured to assess the effectiveness and safety of patient care services, adherence to standards, and quality and integrity of the practice. It is aligned with the health system’s overall plan and system for performance and quality improvement, accrediting organizations, and with payer contractual obligations for quality reporting. Pharmacy departments must have internal procedures for ongoing surveillance and reporting to assess overall appropriateness of services and implement quality improvements as needed to integrate quality metrics that drive quality improvement and refocus efforts on areas of need. The pharmacy department should have process and feedback loop in place that translates analysis to initiatives and initiatives to measured and improved outcomes using appropriate tools derived from implementation science.