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As the COVID-19 pandemic swept through the United States, our heath-system mobilized clinical pharmacy services to address critical clinical medication management needs. Reinforcing recommended medication management strategies for clinical pharmacists was key to successful implementation. Best practice strategies include converting patients from intravenous (IV) to oral medication, transitioning to IV push medication administration, evaluating standard medication administration timing, reviewing metered dose inhaler (MDI) and nebulizer utilization, using alternatives for medications in short supply, reviewing coronavirus disease COVID-19 treatment recommendations, reviewing COVID-19 patient care on interdisciplinary rounds, de-prescribing and de-escalating to eliminate unnecessary medications, and assessing for appropriate venous thromboembolism prophylaxis. These strategies served to help protect medication supply, reduce number of staff entries into patient rooms to conserve personal protective equipment, limit nursing time in patient rooms to reduce COVID-19 exposure risk, and to conserve compounding supplies. Here we present example medication management guidance as used by a large healthcare system during the COVID-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: We assessed the ability to identify key data relevant to influenza and other respiratory virus surveillance in a large‐scale US‐based hospital electronic medical record (EMR) dataset using seasonal influenza as a use case. We describe characteristics and outcomes of hospitalized influenza cases across three seasons. Methods: We identified patients with an influenza diagnosis between March 2017 and March 2020 in 140 US hospitals as part of the US FDA's Sentinel System. We calculated descriptive statistics on the presence of high‐risk conditions, influenza antiviral administrations, and severity endpoints. Results: Among 5.1 million hospitalizations, we identified 29,520 hospitalizations with an influenza diagnosis; 64% were treated with an influenza antiviral within 2 days of admission, and 25% were treated >2 days after admission. Patients treated >2 days after admission had more comorbidities than patients treated within 2 days of admission. Patients never treated during hospitalization had more documentation of cardiovascular and other diseases than treated patients. We observed more severe endpoints in patients never treated (death = 3%, mechanical ventilation [MV] = 9%, intensive care unit [ICU] = 26%) or patients treated >2 days after admission (death = 2%, MV = 14%, ICU = 32%) than in patients treated earlier (treated on admission: death = 1%, MV = 5%, ICU = 23%, treated within 2 days of admission: death = 1%, MV = 7%, ICU = 27%). Conclusions: We identified important trends in influenza severity related to treatment timing in a large inpatient dataset, laying the groundwork for the use of this and other inpatient EMR data for influenza and other respiratory virus surveillance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]