J Neurocrit Care.  2018 Dec;11(2):110-118. 10.18700/jnc.180064.

Effects of Medication Reconciliation and Cost Avoidance Analysis by Clinical Pharmacists in a Neurocritical Care Unit

• Cho US
• Song YJ
• Jung YM
• Choi KS
• Lee E
• Lee E
• Han MK

• KMID: 2434837
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.18700/jnc.180064

Abstract

BACKGROUND
The role of clinical pharmacists in medication therapy to improve clinical and economic outcomes has been reported in the literature. This study was conducted to analyze the changes in details of medication interventions before and after the introduction of clinical pharmacists into the care of neurocritical care unit (NCU) patients, and to evaluate the economic effects of clinical pharmacists by calculating the avoidance cost.
METHODS
A retrospective study was conducted reviewing the electronic medical records from June 2013 to May 2014 (before), and from June 2016 to May 2017 (after). We calculated the number and rates of intervention, the acceptance rates of it, and also reviewed the list of interventions. We calculated avoidance cost if there was no intervention.
RESULTS
The monthly mean number of interventions increased from 8.0 (±5.7) to 31.7 (±12.8) (P < 0.001) and the frequency of intervention also increased from 0.8% to 1.6% (P=0.003). The most frequently provided pharmacist intervention was nutritional support before introduction of clinical pharmacists and discussions on the medication plan after. The number of classified interventions was 14 before introduction of clinical pharmacist services and 33 after. The calculated cost avoidance associated with a clinical pharmacists' integration was 77,990,615 won per year.
CONCLUSION
Introduction of clinicals pharmacist into the NCU was associated with increased intervention rates and expanded types of clinical interventions. The cost avoidance achieved by the pharmacists' interventions can be further explored to evaluate if similar expansions of pharmacists' services achieve similar results in other settings.

Keyword

Intensive care units; Pharmacist; Medication reconciliation; Costs and cost analysis

MeSH Terms

Costs and Cost Analysis
Electronic Health Records
Humans
Intensive Care Units
Medication Reconciliation*
Nutritional Support
Pharmacists*
Retrospective Studies

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