Table 3.

Traditional productivity metrics and their limitations

Productivity metric	Limitation
FTEs per patient-adjusted day	Outpatient care is estimated using revenue adjustment factor (total revenue/inpatient revenue)
FTEs per dose dispensed	Difficult to determine the exact definition of “dose” (eg, insulin units)
Patient-adjusted admission per case mix index (CMI)	CMI acuity adjustment factor is not pharmacy labor resource based (cost of medication use)
Total pharmacy cost per adjusted discharge	Assumes that medication costs are directly proportional to the workload involved

Note: FTE = full-time equivalent.

Adapted from Rough SS, McDaniel M, Rinehart JR. Effective use of workload and productivity monitoring tools in health-system pharmacy, part 1. Am J Health Syst Pharm. 2010;67(4):300-311.