Van Beuren Charitable Foundation renews grant for pharmacist home visits

SOUTH KINGSTOWN – The van Beuren Charitable Foundation, based in Newport, renewed its funding for at-home pharmacist care implemented by the University of Rhode Island’s College of Pharmacy/Academic Health Collaborative in conjunction with Visiting Nurse Services of Newport and Bristol Counties, URI reported.

The $78,519 grant was awarded to URI for the second consecutive year to support the work of Associate Clinical Professor Ginger Lemay with the Visiting Nurse Services in providing weekly home visits by a licensed pharmacist to high-risk patients following discharge from the hospital. The Visiting Nurse Services identify high-risk patients as those who take 10 or more medications or are prescribed drugs that require close management, such as anticoagulants, opioids or diabetes medicines. The pharmacist reviews the patient’s medications, counseling them on indications, dosage, storage, side effects and potential drug interactions, Lemay said in the URI statement.

Since the program began in February 2016, Lemay and her colleagues have collected data showing lower hospital readmission rates and better adherence to medication regimens by the more than 100 patients visited. The group had an observed 30-day hospital readmission rate of just 12 percent, compared to the typical readmission rate of 65 percent for this high-risk population, she said.

“Preliminary data show it is having a great impact, and with this new funding, we are looking at ways to sustain the program, illustrate the continued benefit and explore ways to make this a permanent service independent of grant funding,” Lemay said.

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Lemay hopes to present her findings about this program, which URI described as unique in the nation, to national conferences for pharmacy and home health professionals in the spring.

Lemay and two other pharmacists share the caseload. Pharmacist Madeleine Ng, who participated last year as a URI postdoctoral fellow, has been joined this year by URI postdoctoral fellow Katherine Corsi.

Members of the home health teams work closely together, giving the pharmacists a new perspective on the expertise and approaches of other health care professionals, Lemay said. The pharmacists also benefit from working with patients in a new setting. “Seeing patients in the home gives us a truer sense of how they are taking their medications,” Lemay said. The pharmacists often find patients more comfortable adhering to their medication regimens and asking questions of a pharmacist in their home rather than at their community pharmacy.

Having pharmacists on the team also benefits the nurses, who can spend more time providing nursing care, as they don’t have to focus on medication management, Lemay said. In addition, patient surveys report high satisfaction with the pharmacist visits.

This year, Lemay will focus on compiling and analyzing long-term data on patient hospital readmission rates, comparing these to rates for a group of patients who are not visited at home by a pharmacist. If the comprehensive data indicate a consistent benefit to patients, she hopes to demonstrate that the program pays for itself in reduced costs to the health care system and that it becomes a permanent feature of home care services.

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