Impact of pharmacist interventions on clinical outcome and cost avoidance in a university teaching hospital
Background A significant number of clinical pharmacy services have shown to improve in-hospital medication safety and patient outcome. Prescription review and pharmacist interventions are a fundamental part of hospital clinical pharmacy activities. In a context of restricted financial resources, pro...
Saved in:
Published in | International journal of clinical pharmacy Vol. 40; no. 6; pp. 1474 - 1481 |
---|---|
Main Authors | , , , , , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Cham
Springer International Publishing
01.12.2018
Springer Nature B.V Springer Netherlands |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
Cover
Loading…
Summary: | Background
A significant number of clinical pharmacy services have shown to improve in-hospital medication safety and patient outcome. Prescription review and pharmacist interventions are a fundamental part of hospital clinical pharmacy activities. In a context of restricted financial resources, proving the economic and clinical impact of this activity seems necessary.
Objective
The aim of this study was to assess the clinical impact on patient outcomes and economic benefit of prescription review by pharmacists.
Setting
1624-bed tertiary French university teaching hospital.
Method
Prospective single center study evaluating prescriptions for which a pharmacist intervention was issued over a 6-month period. The clinical impact of every pharmacist intervention was evaluated by a multidisciplinary experts committee. Economic benefit was evaluated from the public health care system spending standpoint.
Main outcome measures
Number of avoided hospitalization days and associated public health care system cost-avoidance.
Results
Prescription review and interventions by pharmacists prevented 73 intensive care unit hospitalization days, 74 continuous monitoring unit hospitalization days and 66 days of conventional hospitalization. €252,294.00 in public health expenditure were thus prevented. For every Euro invested in the prescription review activity, €5.09 of public health spending were potentially saved.
Conclusion
Our study shows that prescription review and clinical pharmacists’ interventions had an impact on clinical outcomes which translated into prevented hospitalization days. Prescription optimization through pharmacist interventions allows significant health care cost savings which makes this service highly efficient. |
---|---|
Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
ISSN: | 2210-7703 2210-7711 |
DOI: | 10.1007/s11096-018-0733-6 |