Economic evaluation of clinical pharmacy service using integrated health system in tertiary care hospital

ABSTRACT

Background

Clinical pharmacy services are the specialized practices of pharmacists to provide pharmaceutical care. All these activities are documented as pharmacist interventions to avoid medication errors which occur during prescribing, dispensing, and administration. The purpose of this study is to conduct an economic analysis of the pharmacist interventions using integrated health system.

Research design and methods

A retrospective study was conducted in a tertiary care hospital. Pharmacist interventions were analyzed by an independent pharmacist. Cost-saving and cost avoidance analyses were carried out for drug-related interventions. Economic analysis was performed and tabulated both in PKR and USD.

Results

Out of 1330 interventions, 1250 (95%) interventions were accepted and changed the prescription upon the physician-pharmacist consultation while 71 (5%) were not accepted. Interventions related to prescribing and duplication errors were the highest of all (30 and 29% respectively). Pharmacist interventions were recorded with a 95% acceptance rate. Cost analysis showed that pharmacist interventions saved around 105,115.88 US dollars.

Conclusion

Clinical pharmacy services provided by integrated health system are a cost saving program. The cost saved per intervention for our study is around USD 37 which is more than another similar study which quoted USD 30.35 per intervention.

KEYWORDS:

• Pharmacy interventions
• cost saving
• cost analysis in hospital
• pharmacist
• tertiary care hospitals
• cost avoidance
• Pakistan
• developing country

Declaration of interest

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge all the pharmacists of Lady Reading Hospital for their contribution and hard work to establish clinical pharmacy services.

Reviewer disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

This paper was not funded.