Significance versus strength of correlation

The use of electronic health record embedded MRC-ICU as a metric for critical care pharmacist workload

Objectives

A lack of pharmacist-specific risk-stratification scores in the electronic health record (EHR) may limit resource optimization. The medication regimen complexity-intensive care unit (MRC-ICU) score was implemented into our center's EHR for use by clinical pharmacists. The purpose of this evaluation was to evaluate MRC-ICU as a predictor of pharmacist workload and to assess its potential as an additional dimension to traditional workload measures.

Materials and methods

Data were abstracted from the EHR on adult ICU patients, including MRC-ICU scores and 2 traditional measures of pharmacist workload: numbers of medication orders verified and interventions logged. This was a single-center study of an EHR-integrated MRC-ICU tool. The primary outcome was the association of MRC-ICU with institutional metrics of pharmacist workload. Associations were assessed using the initial 24-h maximum MRC-ICU score's Pearson's correlation with overall admission workload and the day-to-day association using generalized linear mixed-effects modeling.

Results

A total of 1205 patients over 5083 patient-days were evaluated. Baseline MRC-ICU was correlated with both cumulative order volume (Spearman's rho 0.41, P < .001) and cumulative interventions placed (Spearman's rho 0.27, P < .001). A 1-point increase in maximum daily MRC-ICU was associated with a 31% increase in order volume (95% CI, 24%-38%) and 4% increase in interventions (95% CI, 2%-5%).

Discussion and conclusion

The MRC-ICU is a validated score that has been previously correlated with important patient-centered outcomes. Here, MRC-ICU was modestly associated with 2 traditional objective measures of pharmacist workload, including orders verified and interventions placed, which is an important step for its use as a tool for resource utilization needs.