Pharmacist-Led Population Health Initiative to Address Statin Care Gaps: A Quality Improvement Project

Evidence-based guidelines recommend statins as first-line therapy to reduce the risk of cardiovascular events in patients with cardiovascular disease and/or diabetes. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services assess compliance with these guidelines through performance and process quality measures.

To describe innovative practices to address statin use care gaps, to identify successes and challenges of a pharmacist-led statin initiative, and share quality improvement opportunities related to statin quality metrics.

A retrospective review was conducted in 2023 of patients enrolled in Medicare Advantage value-based care contracts in a large health system. The primary outcome measures were the percentage of patients identified with statin care gaps who met the criteria for statin treatment and the percentage of patients who accepted pharmacist-led recommendations to initiate statin therapy. Outcomes were analyzed using descriptive statistics.

Among those with statin care gaps, 42% met criteria for pharmacist-led statin initiation. Of those who met criteria, 22% accepted pharmacist's recommendation to initiate statin therapy.

Pharmacist-led statin initiation is effective; however, systematic barriers remain to improve statin quality performance. These results can help others adopt innovative practices that target statin care gaps and assess opportunities for quality improvement.