The Asheville Project: long-term clinical, humanistic, and economic outcomes of a community-based medication therapy management program for asthma.

OBJECTIVE: To assess clinical, humanistic, and economic outcomes of a community-based medication therapy management (MTM) program for 207 adult patients with asthma over 5 years. DESIGN: Quasi-experimental, longitudinal pre-post study. SETTING: 12 pharmacy locations in Asheville, N.C. PATIENTS/OTHER PARTICIPANTS: Patients with asthma covered by two self-insured health plans; professional educator at Mission Hospitals; 18 certificate-trained community and hospital pharmacists. INTERVENTIONS: Education by a certified asthma educator; regular long-term follow-up by pharmacists (reimbursed for MTM by health plans) using scheduled consultations, monitoring, and recommendations to physicians. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Changes in forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1), asthma severity, symptom frequency, the degree to which asthma affected people's lives, presence of an asthma action plan, asthma-related emergency department/hospital events, and changes in asthma-related costs over time. RESULTS: All objective and subjective measures of asthma control improved and were sustained for as long as 5 years. FEV1 and severity classification improved significantly. The proportion of patients with asthma action plans increased from 63% to 99%. Patients with emergency department visits decreased from 9.9% to 1.3%, and hospitalizations from 4.0% to 1.9%. Spending on asthma medications increased; however, asthma-related medical claims decreased and total asthma-related costs were significantly lower than the projections based on the study population's historical trends. Direct cost savings averaged 725 dollars/patient/year, and indirect cost savings were estimated to be 1230 dollars/patient/year. Indirect costs due to missed/nonproductive workdays decreased from 10.8 days/year to 2.6 days/year. Patients were six times less likely to have an emergency department/hospitalization event after program interventions. CONCLUSION: Patients with asthma who received education and long-term medication therapy management services achieved and maintained significant improvements and had significantly decreased overall asthma-related costs despite increased medication costs that resulted from increased use.

Studying pharmaceutical care: difficult but necessary.

Research into the impact of pharmaceutical care need not be complex, but it is difficult in real-world settings. Pharmaceutical care projects need a committed project manager, dedicated pharmacists, an involved payer, and patients who believe they have a problem that needs to be addressed. Significant differences in outcomes are more likely with some chronic diseases than with others. Adequate funding of pharmaceutical care studies is needed to support identification of drug-related problems and outcomes in larger numbers of patients and over longer time periods. Demonstrating changes in patient satisfaction with providers and in health-related quality of life is difficult.

The Asheville Project: factors associated with outcomes of a community pharmacy diabetes care program.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the importance of environment, patient characteristics, and health behavior in explaining differences in clinical, economic, and humanistic outcomes of pharmaceutical care services (PCS) for patients with diabetes. DESIGN: Quasi-experimental, pre-post cohort-with-comparison group study using multivariate logistic regression. SETTING: Twelve community pharmacies in Asheville, N.C. PATIENTS AND OTHER PARTICIPANTS: Eighty-five patients with diabetes who were employees, dependents, or retirees from two self-insured employers; community pharmacists who completed a diabetes certificate program and received reimbursement for PCS. INTERVENTIONS: Scheduled consultations with pharmacists involving education and training, assessment, monitoring, follow-up, and referral. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Change in glycosylated hemoglobin (A1c) value, diabetes diagnosis and all-diagnosis utilization and cost of medical care, quality of life, and satisfaction with pharmacy services. RESULTS: The strongest predictors of improvement in A1c following PCS were the patient characteristics baseline glycemic control and type 1 diabetes. All patients with type 1 diabetes had reduced their A1c concentrations at follow-up. Patients in one employer group (an environmental characteristic) were significantly more likely to have a 10% reduction in diabetes diagnosis costs, compared with employees in the other group. They were also more likely to report improved satisfaction with pharmacy services. No other statistically significant relationships were found. CONCLUSION: The greatest improvement in A1c occurred among patients with type 1 diabetes and/or higher baseline A1c concentrations. When controlling for other factors, PCS did not emerge as a significant factor in lowering A1c, but it was imprecisely measured, and our proxy measure did not capture the full complement of PCS provided to patients. Success in terms of cost savings and patient satisfaction differed by employer group.

The Asheville Project: long-term clinical and economic outcomes of a community pharmacy diabetes care program.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the persistence of outcomes for up to 5 years following the initiation of community-based pharmaceutical care services (PCS) for patients with diabetes. DESIGN: Quasi-experimental, longitudinal pre-post cohort study. SETTING: Twelve community pharmacies in Asheville, N.C. PATIENTS AND OTHER PARTICIPANTS: Patients with diabetes covered by self-insured employers' health plans. Community pharmacists trained in a diabetes certificate program and reimbursed for PCS. INTERVENTIONS: Education by certified diabetes educators, long-term community pharmacist follow-up using scheduled consultations, clinical assessment, goal setting, monitoring, and collaborative drug therapy management with physicians. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Changes in glycosylated hemoglobin (A1c) and serum lipid concentrations and changes in diabetes-related and total medical utilization and costs over time. RESULTS: Mean A1c decreased at all follow-ups, with more than 50% of patients demonstrating improvements at each time. The number of patients with optimal A1c values (< 7%) also increased at each follow-up. More than 50% showed improvements in lipid levels at every measurement. Multivariate logistic regressions suggested that patients with higher baseline A1c values or higher baseline costs were most likely to improve or have lower costs, respectively. Costs shifted from inpatient and outpatient physician services to prescriptions, which increased significantly at every follow-up. Total mean direct medical costs decreased by $1,200 to $1,872 per patient per year compared with baseline. Days of sick time decreased every year (1997-2001) for one employer group, with estimated increases in productivity estimated at $18,000 annually. CONCLUSION: Patients with diabetes who received ongoing PCS maintained improvement in A1c over time, and employers experienced a decline in mean total direct medical costs.

The Asheville Project: short-term outcomes of a community pharmacy diabetes care program.

OBJECTIVE: To assess short-term clinical, economic, and humanistic outcomes of pharmaceutical care services (PCS) for patients with diabetes in community pharmacies. DESIGN: Intention-to-treat, pre-post cohort-with-comparison group study. SETTING: Twelve community pharmacies in Asheville, N.C. PATIENTS AND OTHER PARTICIPANTS: Eighty-five patients with diabetes who were employees, dependents, or retirees from two self-insured employers; community pharmacists who completed a diabetes certificate program and received reimbursement for PCS. INTERVENTIONS: Patients scheduled consultations with pharmacists over 7 to 9 months. Pharmacists provided education, self-monitored blood glucose (SMBG) meter training, clinical assessment, patient monitoring, follow-up, and referral. Group 1 patients began receiving PCS in March 1997, and group 2 patients began in March 1999. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Change from baseline in the two employer groups in glycosylated hemoglobin (A1c) values, serum lipid concentrations, health-related quality of life (HRQOL), satisfaction with pharmacy services, and health care utilization and costs. RESULTS: Patients used SMBG meters at home, stored all readings, and brought their meters with them to 87% of the 317 PCS visits (3.7 visits per patient). Patients' A1c concentrations were significantly reduced, and their satisfaction with pharmacy services improved significantly. Patients experienced no change in HRQOL. From the payers' perspective, there was a significant dollars 52 per patient per month increase in diabetes costs for both groups, with PCS fees and diabetes prescriptions accounting for most of the increase. In contrast, both groups experienced a nonsignificant but economically important 29% decrease in nondiabetes costs and a 16% decrease in all-diagnosis costs. CONCLUSION: A clear temporal relationship was found between PCS and improved A1c, improved patient satisfaction with pharmacy services, and decreased all-diagnosis costs. Findings from this study demonstrate that pharmacists provided effective cognitive services and refute the idea that pharmacists must be certified diabetes educators to help patients with diabetes improve clinical outcomes.

Screening, prevention and socioeconomic costs associated with the treatment of colorectal cancer.

Colorectal cancer (CRC), the third most prevalent cancer worldwide, imposes a significant economic and humanistic burden on patients and society. One study conservatively estimated the annual expenditures for colorectal cancer to be approximately dollars US 5.3 billion in 2000, including both direct and indirect costs. However, other investigators estimated inpatient costs alone incurred in the US in 1994 to be around dollars US 5.14 billion. Therefore, the economic burden of colorectal cancer in the US could be projected to be somewhere in the range of dollars US 5.5-6.5 billion by considering that inpatient costs approximate 80% of total direct costs. No worldwide data have been published, but assuming that the US represents 25-40% of total expenditures in oncology, as seen for breast and lung cancers, a rough estimate for colorectal cancer would be in the range of dollars US 14-22 billion. Screening helps increase patient survival by diagnosing colorectal cancer early. The ideal method among the four tests most used (faecal occult blood test, flexible sigmoidoscopy, colonoscopy and double contrast barium enema) has not been identified. Economic studies of colorectal cancer screening are complex because of the many variables involved, as well as the fact that the outcomes must be followed for many years, and the lack of consensus on screening guidelines. Intuitively, modelling colorectal cancer is one way to overcome these hurdles; published modelling studies predict colorectal cancer screening programs to be within the threshold of dollars US 40000 per life-year saved. The faecal occult blood test appears to be the only clearly effective test, both from a clinical and an economic viewpoint. Important limitations are the invasiveness and inconvenience of the screening procedures, except faecal occult blood test. Patients' comfort and satisfaction are essential in improving compliance with screening recommendations, which appears to be low even in the US (35% of the general population aged over 40 years and 60% of the high-risk population), the country with the highest awareness and compliance in the world. Since colorectal cancer is generally a disease of the elderly, its economic burden is expected to grow in the near future, mainly due to population aging. Potential avenues to pursue in order to contain or reduce the economic burden of colorectal cancer would be the design and implementation of efficient screening programmes, the improvement of patient awareness and compliance with screening guidelines, the development of appropriate prevention programs (i.e. primary and secondary), and earlier diagnosis.