Documentation of Home-Based Primary Care Pharmacist Interventions

Title: Documentation of Home-Based Primary Care Pharmacist Interventions Authors: Virginia Krause, Pharm. D., Bridget Kaufmann, Pharm. D., Kara Wong, Pharm. D.

Purpose: Home-Based Primary Care (HBPC) is a home-based interdisciplinary service provided to Veterans requiring complex chronic disease management through Veterans Affairs hospitals. The clinical pharmacist provides medication recommendations on a scheduled basis on a variety of disease states. The pharmacist is new to the HBPC team as of 2008, and there is limited definition for the scope and daily activities for this position. The purpose of this descriptive study is to provide a representation of the HBPC population and the scope of the clinical pharmacist in the interdisciplinary team approach to care by documenting and describing current HBPC pharmacist activities.

Methods: Conducted an analysis using the computerized medical record of the HBPC pharmacist recommendations including regular medication reviews, individualized drug regimens, drug information consultation, and drug monitoring. Patients were included if they were enrolled in HBPC from August 2009 to December 2010 and received a medication review during their enrollment. The data were used to describe the workload of the HBPC pharmacist, characterize the medication-related problems of the HBPC sample, and document the pharmacist's role in improving medication use (including percentage of accepted recommendations and the medication appropriateness index).

Results: Interim analysis of the first 20 percent of the data collected shows the percentage of accepted recommendations is 83 percent. Further results are pending.

Conclusions: Pending