Integrating Family Medicine and Pharmacy to Advance Primary Care Therapeutics

Autor: Janusz Kaczorowski, Kathryn Gaebel, Christine Rodriguez, Zubin Austin, Kevin Pottie, Lisa Dolovich, Connie Sellors, Barbara Farrell
Rok vydání: 2008
Předmět:
Zdroj: Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics. 83:913-917
ISSN: 1532-6535
0009-9236
Popis: The prevalence of suboptimal prescribing of medications is well documented. Patients are often undertreated or not offered therapeutic treatments that are likely to confer benefit. As a result, drug-related hospital admissions are common and often preventable. Improvements to the health-care system are clearly needed in order to maximize the benefits that can be derived from medications. Many countries are changing their primary health-care systems to improve the quality of health-care delivery. One main transformation is the use of multidisciplinary care teams to provide care in a coordinated manner often from the same location or by using the common medical record of the patients. It has been demonstrated that pharmacists can improve prescribing, reduce health-care utilization and medication costs, and contribute to clinical improvements in many chronic medical conditions, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and psychiatric illness. However, the effect of integrating a pharmacist providing general services into a primary care group has not been extensively studied. The Integrating Family Medicine and Pharmacy to Advance Primary Care Therapeutics (IMPACT) project was designed to provide a real-world demonstration of the feasibility of integrating the pharmacist into primary care office practice. This article provides a description of the IMPACT project participants; the IMPACT practice model and the concepts incorporated in its development; some initial results from the program evaluation; sustainability of the model; and some reflections on the implementation of the practice model.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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