Drug therapy management: an empirical report of drug therapy problems, pharmacists' interventions, and results of pharmacists' actions.

OBJECTIVES

To determine the number and types of drug therapy problems identified by pharmacists at six community pharmacies, identify the interventions made by these pharmacists in their attempts to resolve drug therapy problems, and determine the results of the pharmacists' actions taken to resolve drug therapy problems.

DESIGN

Retrospective review of patient records from pharmacies.

SETTING

Six community pharmacies that had participated in Project ImPACT: Hyperlipidemia.

PATIENTS

One hundred sixteen patients from Project ImPACT: Hyperlipidemia.

INTERVENTION

Drug therapy problems, pharmacists' interventions, and results of pharmacists' actions were identified and categorized. Drug therapy problems were classified into seven categories, pharmacists' interventions into six categories, and results were categorized into eight types. Frequencies and descriptive statistics were calculated for the measures.

RESULTS

A total of 512 initial drug therapy problems were reported for 116 patients in the 6 pharmacies. In addition to the initial interventions, pharmacists documented another 545 times in which they intervened on the original problems. There were 354 (69.1%) drug therapy problems associated with hyperlipidemia and 158 (30.9%) with other conditions. Overall, most common types of drug therapy problems were needs additional therapy (39.8%) and nonadherence to therapy (31.1%). The most common discretionary pharmacist interventions were patient education and physician communication, which occurred on average 4.63 and 3.30 times during the project period. The most common consequence of a pharmacist intervention was an increase in patient adherence, which was reported for almost half of the patients.

CONCLUSION

Drug therapy management (DTM) for patients with dyslipidemias identified frequent drug therapy problems associated with both hyperlipidemia and other conditions. Pharmacists used interventions that included laboratory testing, patient monitoring, patient education, and physician communication to influence patient adherence and optimize drug therapy. Although further research is needed, the findings of this analysis are promising for the more widespread adoption of a DTM role by community pharmacists.