Evaluation of a medication adherence, synchronization, and monitoring program at an independent community pharmacy

Abstract

Objective: Approximately 117 million people in the United States have at least one chronic condition. Through adherence programs, community pharmacists can engage patients with multiple chronic conditions on an ongoing basis through medication synchronization, education on complex medication regimens, and disease-state monitoring. Measuring the impact of these programs is vital to continued implementation of such enhanced services. The objective of this study is to evaluate medication adherence rates for enrollees in the adherence program at an independent community pharmacy. Methods: This is a retrospective observational study at five locations of an independent community pharmacy in rural North Carolina. Patients will be screened for eligibility using data from the medication dispensing system. Patients will be included if they are enrolled in the adherence program for at least 6 months. Exclusion criteria include patients who are homeless, live in a nursing home or personal care home, or refuse to fill their medications solely at one of the five pharmacy locations. The primary outcome measure is the medication possession ratio (MPR; defined as the number of days medication was supplied within the refill interval divided by the number of days in the refill interval) for each month of enrollment. Patients with an MPR ≥0.8 will be classified as adherent. Other data will include: patient age, gender, race, enrollment date, number of medications, drug name, drug category, gap in therapy (defined as the number of days elapsed since medication was last dispensed) for each month of enrollment, number of prescribers, payers, delivery versus pickup, self-enrollment versus physician referral, and bubble-packed versus bottles. Descriptive statistics will be used for data analysis. Results: Approximately 500 patients enrolled in the adherence program will be screened for study inclusion.