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May 22, 2013
Patient Satisfaction Up With Pharmacist-Directed Anticoagulation Service
Detroit—An inpatient pharmacist-directed anticoagulation service (PDAS) at Henry Ford Hospital significantly increased patient satisfaction, according to a survey. An article on the survey and its results were published online recently by the Annals of Pharmacotherapy. Authors suggested it was the first study to show how such a pharmacy program could impact patient satisfaction. The survey of 689 patients who received pharmacist-directed inpatient anticoagulant therapy found: • A 10.6% increase in overall satisfaction with their medical care; • A 37.2% increase in satisfaction with the amount of information communicated about their drug therapy; • A 35.2% increase in satisfaction with the clarity of information communicated about their drug therapy; and • A 29.5% increase in satisfaction with the quality of answers provided by the pharmacist. “Our findings demonstrate that formal and structured patient care roles for pharmacists can positively impact patient satisfaction overall,” said James Kalus, PharmD, senior clinical pharmacy manager at Henry Ford and senior author of the study. “It also provides a compelling example of what pharmacy departments and hospital leadership may consider when redesigning patient care models in an era of hospital value-based purchasing.” Under Henry Ford’s PDAS model, a team of pharmacists doses, monitors, and educates all hospitalized patients receiving anticoagulants, including warfarin, and ensures that patients safely transition from the hospital to an outpatient setting. It replaced a more conventional inpatient anticoagulant model directed by a primary care team and clinical pharmacist. Not only patient satisfaction has improved since the PDAS model was implemented 4 years ago. Henry Ford also has reduced the risk of bleeding and thrombosis and other complications by 5% and achieved more than 70% success with patients transitioning from the hospital to an outpatient clinic, according to the article’s authors. In light of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s emphasis on patient satisfaction data to determine Medicare reimbursement, Kalus and his colleagues sought to determine whether the PDAS had any impact on that measure. The survey included 1,684 patients—689 who responded—receiving inpatient anticoagulant therapy in the conventional anticoagulant model from February 2001 to April 2007 and in a PDAS from December 2008 to December 2010. The survey asked five questions to evaluate the following issues: • The amount of information they received about their medicine while hospitalized. • The clarity of information they received about their medicine while hospitalized. • The answers to their questions about their medicine while hospitalized. • Level of satisfaction with their medical care while hospitalized. |
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