National Survey Results

With the continuing pressure on pharmacy directors to do more with less, frustration often mounts when the resources allocated toward building a stellar department are in competition with the acquisition of new automation programs to increase patient safety. Obviously, even the best-designed automation solutions are only as good as the staff behind them. Likewise, attracting and retaining a professional staff is often predicated on having the correct tools in place to support their efforts at providing excellent patient care. To manage this dichotomy in today’s pharmacy, accurate data on staffing and salary practices in hospital pharmacy is necessary to establish benchmarks and set goals for improvements.

Survey Design
In the fourth quarter of 2010, Pharmacy Purchasing & Products polled a random, nationwide sampling of health system pharmacy directors. We asked about staffing levels, budget numbers, salaries, job satisfaction and recruitment efforts. Responses were solicited via email and we received a total of 604 responses, yielding a confidence interval of 3.77 (95% +/-3.77) based on the total population of pharmacy directors nationwide.

We intentionally surveyed a random sampling of pharmacy directors, not simply readers of PP&P, ensuring the data reflects trends across the entirety of hospital pharmacy practice.

Overall Results
In previous years, the shortage of pharmacists has been the bane of many facilities, particularly those in rural areas. Over the course of 2010, 34% of facilities reported a persistent problem with open positions, however the majority of those facilities had only one unfilled pharmacist position. The shortage of technicians mirrored that of pharmacists, as 34% of facilities also struggled with unfilled positions and the majority also had only one unfilled technician position.  In addition, 10% of hospitals experienced lay-offs among their pharmacy staff in the past year. And while support staff positions were the most likely to be cut, pharmacist jobs have been lost as well.

On the pages that follow you will find in-depth data from the survey results examining staffing levels, budget amounts, and pharmacy staff reductions.

In the coming issues of PP&P, additional results from this survey will be available, including:

• Pharmacy Department Salaries
• Job Satisfaction
• Staff Recruitment

Keep an eye out for this additional data that will examine pharmacy department salaries by facility size and years of experience; job satisfaction both for pharmacy directors and their staff; and staff recruitment challenges, timelines, costs, and successful methods.

Many of today’s significant budgeting challenges are exacerbated by the sense of insecurity that defines the current economy. Our hope is that the benchmarking data from this survey (both in the pages that follow and in our upcoming issues) provide you with information that is useful in planning your staffing budgets.

Deanne Halvorsen is the editorial director at Ridgewood Medical Media, publishers of Pharmacy Purchasing & Products, and can be reached at dhalvorsen@ridgewoodmedia.com.

Click Here to download the full PDF of the Pharmacy Salary & Staffing Supplement.