A Prospective, Randomized Trial to Assess the Cost Impact of Pharmacist-Initiated Interventions

Abstract

Background: Hospital pharmacists make many recommendations that improve patients' quality of care and/or reduce drug costs. While the impact of quality-of-care interventions is difficult to quantify, those limited to cost savings could be assessed in a prospective, randomized fashion.

Attitudes of physicians, nurses and pharmacists concerning the development of clinical pharmacy activities in a university hospital

“…It is interesting that for these two statements the mean scores of agreement were among the lowest for all three professional groups. Despite many reports about a positive economic impact of clinical pharmacists' activities in the literature (18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27), physicians and nurses found those clinical pharmacists' activities less important. Budgeting and cost containment in the hospital is the responsibility of managers rather than pharmacists.…”

In-hospital medication reviews reduce unidentified drug-related problems

“…The clinical pharmacy process involves identifying potential and actual DRPs, resolving actual DRPs and preventing potential DRPs. Previous studies have demonstrated that clinical pharmacy services for in-patients reduce the number of drug-related problems [12], the length of stay [13][14][15][16], costs [13,[16][17], adverse drug reactions [18], rates of readmission [14][15] and rates of drug-related readmission [19].…”

Implementation of a School-wide Clinical Intervention Documentation System

“…Clinical interventions made by pharmacists improve patient care and result in cost savings for institutions. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] Intervention data can be useful in providing information to other health care providers or health care system administrators regarding the value of clinical pharmacy services. This documentation also may be used to justify salaries for current pharmacist positions or to validate the need for additional pharmacist positions.…”

“…While there are numerous published studies regarding documentation of pharmacists' clinical services, [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] the studies on the impact of clinical services performed by pharmacy students, residents, and faculty members are less robust. Student pharmacists must learn and appropriately apply documentation skills so that doing so will become a professional habit that is continued after graduation.…”