Outpatient clinical pharmacy practice in the face of COVID-19 at a cancer center in New York City.

PURPOSE: With the rapid spread of COVID-19 in New York City since early March 2020, innovative measures were needed for clinical pharmacy specialists to provide direct clinical care safely to cancer patients. Allocating the workforce was necessary to meet the surging needs of the inpatient services due to the COVID-19 outbreak, which had the potential to compromise outpatient services. We present here our approach of restructuring clinical pharmacy services and providing direct patient care in outpatient clinics during the pandemic. DATA SOURCES: We conducted a retrospective review of electronic clinical documentation involving clinical pharmacy specialist patient encounters in 9 outpatient clinics from March 1, 2020 to May 31, 2020. The analysis of the clinical pharmacy specialist interventions and the impact of the interventions was descriptive. DATA SUMMARY: As hospital services were modified to handle the surge due to COVID-19, select clinical pharmacy specialists were redeployed from the outpatient clinics or research blocks to COVID-19 inpatient teams. During these 3 months, clinical pharmacy specialists were involved in 2535 patient visits from 9 outpatient clinics and contributed a total of 4022 interventions, the majority of which utilized telemedicine. The interventions provided critical clinical pharmacy care during the pandemic and omitted 199 in-person visits for medical care. CONCLUSION: The swift transition to telemedicine allowed the provision of direct clinical pharmacy services to patients with cancer during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Characteristics and outcomes of patients with solid tumors receiving chemotherapy in the intensive care unit.

PURPOSE: The objective of this study was to evaluate the short- and long-term outcomes of adult patients with solid tumors receiving chemotherapy in the intensive care unit (ICU). METHODS: This was a retrospective single-center study comparing the outcomes of patients with solid tumors who received chemotherapy in the ICU with a matched cohort of ICU patients (by age, sex, and tumor type) who did not receive chemotherapy. Conditional logistic regression and shared frailty Cox regression were used to assess short-term (ICU and hospital) mortality and death by 12-month post-hospital discharge, respectively. RESULTS: Seventy-three patients with solid tumors who received chemotherapy in the ICU were successfully matched. The most common solid tumors included thoracic (30%), genitourinary (26%), and breast (16%). The ICU, hospital, and 12-month (post discharge)  mortality rates of patients who recieved chomtherapy in the ICU were 23%, 36%, and 43%, respectively. When compared to the matched cohort of patients who did not receive chemotherapy, patients who received chemotherapy had a significantly longer length of stay in the ICU (median 7 vs. 4 days, p < 0.001) and hospital (median 15 vs. 11 days, p = 0.011) but similar short-term ICU and hospital mortality rates (23% vs. 18% and 36% vs. 38%, respectively). Patients who received chemotherapy in the ICU were at a lower risk of death by 12 months (HR 0.31, p < 0.001) compared to the matched cohort on multivariable analysis. CONCLUSIONS: Patients with solid tumors who received chemotherapy had increased ICU and hospital length of stay compared to patients who did not. Although short-term mortality did not differ, patients who received chemotherapy in the ICU had improved long-term survival. Our data can inform critical care triage decisions to include patients who are to receive chemotherapy in the ICU.