System for exchanging information among pharmacists in different practice environments

A system for exchanging patient information among hospital, long-term-care (LTC), and ambulatory care pharmacies is described, and the influence of that system on pharmacist interventions is reported.

Study sites consisted of three ambulatory care pharmacies, one LTC pharmacy, and one hospital in a small Midwestern city. Meetings were held by clinicians, the investigators, and hospital administrators to plan the information-exchange system. From January through June 1996, patients admitted to the hospital were checked to see if they came from a participating (source) pharmacy; if so, they were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The hospital requested preadmission information from the source pharmacy for experimental group patients and did not do so for control patients. After the information arrived, the hospital pharmacists could use it to identify and document drug therapy problems. When an experimental group patient was discharged, the hospital sent information to the appropriate source pharmacy. A total of 156 patients were enrolled in the study.

Complete information transfer occurred for 75% of experimental group patients. Significantly more experimental group patients than control patients had at least one in-hospital pharmacist intervention recorded. Similarly, in the ambulatory care pharmacies (but not the LTC pharmacy) significantly more interventions per patient were documented for the experimental group.

Hospital and ambulatory care pharmacists documented more interventions for patients about whom information had been supplied than for patients for whom that information had not been supplied. No difference in intervention rates was observed for LTC pharmacists, who were already being supplied information by the LTC facilities about patients discharged from the hospital.