Abstract:
Background: Comprehensive medication reviews (CMRs) provide opportunities for pharmacists to perform clinical services to their patients. However, pharmacists are often not able to perform CMRs due to time constraints. Studies have shown that incorporating support staff into the CMR workflow may lead to increases in the completion of CMRs. Objective: The primary objective was to examine the change in the number of CMRs completed at the pharmacy after a new strategy was implemented to perform and prepare for CMRs. The secondary objective was to examine the changes in the revenue generated from CMRs. Methods: This study was a pre-post retrospective, observational study performed at an independent pharmacy. Data were collected and analyzed 10 months before and after implementation of a new strategy. The new strategy called for pharmacy interns to use a template for working up patients prior to CMRs. Wilcoxon signed-rank tests were run on IBM SPSS, Version 24.0, to determine the significance of the changes. Results that generated P values <.05 were considered statistically significant. Results: The total number of CMRs completed increased from 29 before the intervention to 158 after the intervention (P = .009). The revenue generated from CMRs improved statistically (P = .007). Conclusions: Implementing a strategic workflow that uses pharmacy interns and a patient workup template can significantly increase the number of CMRs completed in a community pharmacy. Appropriate delegation of such tasks may allow more time for pharmacists to deliver more CMRs. Additional benefits include increased compensation from delivering more CMRs.