Pharmacists Addressing Hospital Readmissions

Did you know that one in five Medicare patients is readmitted within thirty days of a hospital discharge?

Two key factors contributing to patients being readmitted are patient failure to fill prescriptions post hospital discharge and medication misadventures resulting from patients being unprepared to manage the medications at home.

Historically, there has been very little integration between the hospital discharge process and the prescription being filled at an outpatient pharmacy. Generally, when a patient is discharged from the hospital, the patient is expected to go to a pharmacy, present a prescription if one has not yet been submitted, and then wait. If the wait times are too long or if the patient’s prescriptions are not ready, there is a strong chance that the prescription will not be picked up. Not filling or picking up prescriptions often leads to significant complications and hospital readmissions.

Today, outpatient pharmacies and hospitals are focused on combining their pharmacy management technologies to improve patient compliance, reduce medication errors, and to ensure patients are thoroughly educated on all their medications prior to hospital discharge.

Medication Therapy Management (MTM) programs between hospitals and outpatient pharmacies are being tested where outpatient pharmacists personally deliver filled prescriptions to discharging patients and then perform a thorough, personalized discharge medication reconciliation.

The new MTM programs are taking outpatient pharmacists beyond the counter and giving the outpatient pharmacists more time to concentrate on improving patient care. The MTM results continue to show improved patient compliance, lower medication misadventure rates, and decreased hospital readmissions resulting in significant hospital savings, but most important: improved patient safety.