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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Documentation of pharmacists' interventions in the ambulatory setting
— results with geriatric patients | | Author(s) | Jack E Fincham, Jacqueline B Hunter |
| Journal title | Journal of Geriatric Drug Therapy, vol 11, no 4, 1997 |
| Pages | pp 27-42 |
| Source | Haworth Document Delivery Center, The Haworth Press Inc., 10 Alice Street, Binghamton, NY 13904-1580, USA. |
| Keywords | Drugs ; Costs [care] ; Social surveys ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | 25 US community pharmacies were selected as study sites for a project to document their worth in interventions in patients' drug therapy. In 4 weeks, 709 interventions were reported, of which 212 (30%) were with geriatric patients. Direct savings due to pharmacists' actions were an average $20.20 for each generic substitution, $35.36 for therapeutic substitutions, $28.82 for discontinuing drugs, and $46.32 for unnecessary dispensing. Indirect costs saved in avoiding hospitalisation, emergency department visits, and general practice visits were estimated at $137,505 for patients studied, $1,297 per intervention. The study data indicates the breadth and depth of pharmacist activities in the community pharmacy setting which save vast expenditures for medical care to treat potential adverse drug-related sequalae in geriatric patients. Pharmacists were also shown to enhance appropriate use, discontinuance, or avoidance of certain drug therapies which in turn enhanced the quality of patients' pharmaceutical care. Pharmacists deserve recompense for averting unnecessary expenditure. This article also appears as a chapter in 'Geriatric drug therapy interventions', edited by James W Cooper (Haworth Press, 1997). (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-980806002 A |
| Classmark | LLD: QDC: 3F: 7T |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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