Evaluation of Effects of Pharmaceutical Services Provided by Pharmacist Assigned to Operating Theater

To increase the number of surgical operations and reduce the work of anesthesiologists involved in anesthetic management,a pharmacist started providing pharmaceutical services in the operating theater of Kyoto University Hospital in July 2007.We evaluated the changes in the workload of anesthesiologists and number of surgical operations performed due to the services as well as the medicoeconomic effects.Improvement of narcotic management and the provision of anesthetic sets by the pharmacist reduced the workload of anesthesiologists by approximately 173 hours per month.We found that assigning the pharmacist to the operating theater increased the number of daily operations to 22.3,from 20.3 beforehand.Furthermore,doing this achieved annual savings of \2 million by preventing omissions in the reimbursement of medical fees,saved \10 million by providing drug sets designed for use in surgery for individual patients and \5 million by improving drug inventory management.Thus the total annual medicoeconomic benefit was \17 million.The results of the present study suggest that that the stationing of pharmacists in operating theaters not only helps reduce the workload of anesthesiologists and improves drug management but also increases the number of surgical operations and produces medicoeconomic benefits.