Research Projects Page

This study evaluated medication access rates in patients prescribed a PCSK9 inhibitor at a healthcare system with integrated specialty pharmacy services. Overall, 96% of prescriptions resulted in access to a PCSK9 inhibitor, with a median time to approval of 8 days. This high level of access supports this model as a best practice for prescribing PCSK9 inhibitor therapy.

This is a phase IV single-arm study prospectively evaluating the safety and efficacy of apixaban for primary prevention of VTE in patients with MM. The study found that during the 6 month evaluation no patients experienced major hemorrhagic events, MI, stroke, or death. Three patients did have non-major events that were medically managed and one patient discontinued therapy because of an allergic reaction to apixaban.

Vanderbilt Specialty Pharmacy (VSP) embeds pharmacists within an outpatient MS clinic to provide medication management and address barriers to adherence. We found an average adherence rate of 94% as measured by proportion of days covered (PDC), with 89% of all VSP patients achieving the industry standard of 80% PDC. Additionally, results indicate that ensuring financial assistance and low out-of-pocket costs are associated with high adherence to DMT within an integrated specialty clinic.

Universal HCV screening was recently suggested to have the biggest impact on cascade of care improvement. The objective of this study was to compare cascade of care completion rates among patients referred for HCV treatment from traditional referral sources to those referred from the emergency department. We found that patient demographics vary between the two referral sources and patients referred from the emergency department had significantly lower linkage and engagement in HCV care.

An increasing number of specialists and non-specialists are developing clinical programs to treat and cure hepatitis C virus (HCV). The goal of this paper is to evaluate and describe optimal strategies to improve outcomes related to HCV care delivery.

Pharmacists at health system-based specialty pharmacies have the opportunity to improve patient care by providing comprehensive medication management for patients prescribed specialty medication. This manuscript describes how Vanderbilt Specialty Pharmacy integrated pharmacy services into existing outpatient specialty disease clinics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, which improved patient access to therapy and continuity of care.

The objective of this study was to identify factors associated with movement through the HCV CoC after referral to a multidisciplinary ID clinic to sustained virologic response (SVR), including both general and historically difficult to treat populations.

Given the shortage of suitable donor hearts for cardiac transplantation, and the favorable safety and efficacy of current agents used to treat hepatitis C virus(HCV), our institution recently piloted transplantation of select patients using HCV-positive donors. In the era of highly effective DAAs, the use of HCV-positive donors represents a potential approach to safely expand the donor pool.

Based on recent clinical trial data, most patients who fail HCV treatment with direct acting antiviral agents now have excellent retreatment options. In this article, we review the current state of the evidence for HCV retreatment after DAA failure.

In this study, we explored factors related to teriparatide completion. We found that patients utilizing VSP services were 62% more likely to complete teriparatide and 49% less likely to drop out of treatment after completing 12 months of teriparatide compared to non-VSP patients. Additionally, most patients (64%) required the use a financial assistance program only available to VSP patients. Smoking status also significantly impacted teriparatide completion.