Pharmacists Clinical Interventions Reduce Healthcare Costs

In a new study lead by Adam B. Pesaturo (PharmD, BDPS), his research team discovered pharmacists were able to save more than $2 million in annualized cost avoidance through clinical interventions.

In one study, the hospital pharmacy partnered with the information systems and finance departments to create an institution-specific documentation tool. The hospital was able to capture the impact pharmacy interventions had in reducing healthcare cost. According to the PPN article, the pharmacy department reported a cost avoidance of $271, 162 over two months and an associated return on investment of 54 cents for every dollar spent.

In a second study, researchers found that clinical interventions contributed to significant cost savings.

The investigators reviewed the interventions recorded by 17 students over a 36-week period beginning in August 2010. Interventions were evaluated by associated cost avoidance estimated by the intervention system, intervention category and drug class.

A total of 727 interventions were recorded, with an estimated total cost avoidance of $55,879. The most common interventions by category were drug dose evaluations (11.4%), recommendation for medication change or addition (10.3%) and medication reconciliation (8.7%). The intervention categories associated with the highest cost avoidance (Figure) were dose evaluation ($12,393), warfarin dosing ($5,355) and insulin dose titration ($4,437). A total of 198 unique medications were cited in the interventions. The four most commonly documented medications accounted for 29.9% of total interventions and were associated with the most significant cost avoidance: warfarin ($8,274), vancomycin ($5,894), insulin ($5,126) and heparin ($1,866).

I’m a strong advocate of pharmacists being a member of the medical team. It is evident from the two studies above that pharmacists significantly reduce costs and can be a key financial contributor within a healthcare system. It’s important to collect this data, as mentioned in the article, “Pharmacy executives make the business case to hospital/health-systems for expansion of pharmacist services to advance the organization’s pharmacy practice model.”

Does your hospital support pharmacist clinical interventions? Have you seen a reduction of overall cost? How much has your pharmacy saved for your health system?

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