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Abstract
This study evaluated the economic impact of patient-focused pharmacist intervention
in the community retail setting in patients with hypertension, diabetes, asthma, and/or
hypercholesterolemia. Specially trained pharmacists intervened by providing targeted
patient education, performing systematic patient monitoring, offering feedback and
behavior modification, and communicating regularly with patients' physicians to enable
early intervention for drug-related problems. We evaluated prescription drug costs
and total medical costs by comparing claims data from 188 patients enrolled in the
program at three intervention pharmacies with data from 401 control patients at five
nonparticipating pharmacies from the same retail chain. For all disease states, the
average cost per prescription was significantly higher in the group receiving intervention
than in the control group. Differences in total monthly prescription costs were significant
only for patients with asthma, with higher monthly costs in the group receiving intervention.
Substantial savings were demonstrated across all cost analyses for total monthly medical
costs. Savings ranged from a conservative estimate of $143.95 per patient per month
to $293.39 per patient per month when accounting for the possible influence of age,
comorbid conditions, and disease severity. Our data indicate that pharmacist intervention
in this community pharmacy—based disease management model substantially reduced monthly
health care costs in patients with hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, diabetes, and
asthma.
Keywords
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© 1997 Published by Elsevier Inc.
