Tools to prioritize outpatients for pharmaceutical service: A scoping review

The performance of pharmacists in clinical services contributes to improving outcomes in patient drug therapy. In the context of streamlined resources and high health services' demand, the use of patient selection tools can screen those who would benefit more from a pharmaceutical service.

This review aims to map and describe tools developed for patient selection for pharmaceutical services delivered in primary health care and outpatient settings.

The search was conducted in MEDLINE, EMBASE, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, and the Latin American and Caribbean Health Sciences. The search strategy included terms relating to patient selection and outpatient pharmaceutical service. We included papers on outpatient settings, and which described the tool developed for the selection of a patient for pharmaceutical service. Two reviewers extracted data of each study concerning the types and items making up the tool. The items composing the tools were grouped into categories.

Twelve studies were included in the literature. Most of the studies were developed in the United States (53.8%), followed by Canada (30.8%). Approximately half of the studies developed tools for selecting patients for a medication review (46.2%), and only 15.4% for drug therapy management. Identification of patients at risk of drug-related problems, the need for pharmaceutical service follow-up, and patients at risk of hospital readmission were the main objective to develop the tools. In total, 92.3% of the developed tools had items related to drug therapy complexity, 76.9% to comorbidities and 61.5% to adherence/subjective aspects. Statistical methods were employed to evaluate the validation parameters, such as the ROC curve and internal consistency.

Few studies that developed tools to select outpatients for pharmaceutical services were found. However, many tools showed unsatisfactory validation parameters. Thus, it is necessary to improve the development of instruments that can identify patients who would benefit from the pharmaceutical service accurately.