Effects of ambulatory-care pharmacist consultation on mortality and hospitalization

To determine the effect of 3 alternative models of ambulatory-care pharmacist consultation on patient survival and hospitalization.

Patients were randomly chosen adult Kaiser Permanente (KP) Southern California enrollees with at least 1 prescription in the base year. The demonstration lasted 23 months. Using time-dependent proportional hazards estimation, survival and hospitalization were examined across 5 patient risk groups.

The pharmacy interventions were (1) consultation about new or changed prescriptions as mandated by 1992 state and federal regulations (State model), (2) consultation focused on selected high-risk ambulatory care patients (KP model), and (3) pre-1992 standard care (Control model).

In the 6 service areas in which only 1 of the models was implemented, both the KP (relative risk [RR] = 0.295, P < .001) and State (RR = 0.338, P < .001) models significantly reduced emergency hospital admissions over 2 years compared with the Control model when measured across all risk groups. The State model also was associated with fewer urgent and emergency admissions (RR = 0.854, P < .001). In the randomized treatment sample of 5499 patients, the KP model was associated with lower total mortality per new prescription filled (RR = 0.921, P < .01), and significantly lower hospitalization and mortality in high-risk patient groups.

Intensive outpatient pharmacist consultation targeting high-risk patients would improve survival and decrease hospitalization rates. Broader nontargeted consultation would reduce hospitalizations, but was not associated with lower mortality within the 2-year intervention.