VigiLanz Improves Efficiency, Patient Care at Riverside University Health System

Andy Williams, PharmD, BCPP, BCGP, Senior Clinical Pharmacist at Riverside University Health System, discusses how VigiLanz improves patient care.

“I’ve seen VigiLanz make some very strong, important interventions, especially in the realm of our pharmacokinetic monitoring,” says Williams, adding that VigiLanz serves as a second set of eyes for pharmacists.

Watch this short video to learn more about how Williams and his team are using VigiLanz to improve patient care.

Transcript:

I think the biggest benefit that VigiLanz provides for patient care is that it helps us work more efficiently, so we’re able to quickly get the information that we need, so that we can spend more time out on treatment team rounds or out directly interacting with patients on the unit  conducting our pharmacist-led patient education groups. It helps us to take care of any reports or lab monitoring we need to do quickly and efficiently, so that we’re able to then realign our time on something else that could help strengthen patient care.

Since we are a psychiatric hospital, we may have a little bit unique methods in which we use VigiLanz. We use VigiLanz largely for our reports, so it’s able to help us with conducting our quality assurance measures. We’re able to run reports on which patients have received long-acting injectable anti-psychotics each quarter, and then cross compare that with their readmission rates. We’re able to use it to run our Joint Commission Hospital-Based Inpatient Psychiatric Services measures to see patients that are on two or more anti-psychotics. We’re able to use it to run whether or not they have appropriate labs, so if they have their lipid panels or their A1Cs for the patients that are receiving second generation antipsychotics, as well as for pharmacokinetic monitoring of Lithium or valproic acid sodium. 

I’ve seen VigiLanz make some very strong, important interventions, especially in the realm of our pharmacokinetic monitoring. Many of our patients are receiving Lithium, which is a narrow therapeutic index drug, and with that, it has the potential for many drug interactions. It could be very easy for one of our pharmacists to overlook a lab or not see an out-of-range lab. VigiLanz is able to provide that safety net and that second look of eyes to alert us in real time if something is out of range so that we can act quickly, without leaving the patient exposed to a higher level or risk them receiving another dose when that really isn’t appropriate.”