Research Projects Page

This retrospective cohort analysis of adult patients with PAH prescribed PDE-5I therapy through an integrated model fournd that patients achieved high adherence rates despite almost half reporting side effects and a quarter reporting hospitalization. Median out-of-pocket costs were $14, indicating the important role specialty pharmacists play in ensuring affordable therapy.

The objective of this study was to evaluate if medication non-adherence is associated with increased healthcare resource utilization. In patients with moderate-to-severe IBD on self-injectable biologic medication, non-adherence (MPR 0.86) is associated with increased risk of hospitalization and emergency department visits.

Pharmacy technicians facilitate medication refills for patients following transplant by conducting phone calls and scheduling medication shipments. Standard prescribing of these medications required calls to be made every 30 days. However technician’s ability to service an increasing number of patients was limited by high call volume workload. In this study, we found that converting medication supply from 30 to 90-days reduced daily call volume and allowed the technician to service more patients

This study evaluated the response to adalimumab dose intensification (defined as a change in adalimumab therapy with reinduction or an increase in dosing frequency) in pediatric patients with inflammatory bowel disease.

This evaluation assessed the impact of a pharmacist-managed lithium consult service. Implementation of this service resulted in an increase in obtaining a serum lithium level within 24 hours of hospitalization as well as time savings to providers.

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.