ASHP Recognizes Memorial Hospital Pharmacy With National Award

Innovations in Pharmacy Best Practices Drive 2018 ASHP Award

Memphis, TN (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) - The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) has awarded Memorial Hospital with the 2018 ASHP Best Practices Award. Memorial was singled out for the award based on its integrated, comprehensive approach to providing medication therapy and chronic disease management. This approach was implemented across inpatient and outpatient health facilities, physician offices, and each patient’s movement through the health system. Memorial Hospital partners with Pharmacy Systems, Inc. to achieve clinical, operational and financial excellence in Memorial's pharmacy department.

“When medication management is well coordinated across the healthcare system and patients are provided with education and tools to be successful, their short and long term clinical outcomes improve,” said Craig Baker, PharmD, MBA, Director of Pharmacy at Memorial. “By collaborating with providers, team members, and ancillary care areas, our pharmacy team was able to breakdown barriers in care and deliver significantly improved clinical outcomes for patients dealing with chronic diseases.”

The pharmacy’s medication/disease management services were spearheaded by former Director of Pharmacy, Britt Cummins, and focus on assisting patients with medication and lifestyle challenges utilizing an innovative, collaborative, team-based approach. Results generated both improvement in clinical and financial outcomes, including:

Clinical Outcomes:

• Transitions of Care clinic reduced 30-day readmission rates for the same diagnosis from 21% to 4% and all cause readmissions from 15.5% to 7%;
• Heart failure clinic saw an 82% decrease in hospital admissions;
• COPD clinic saw a 63.5% decrease in hospital admissions;
• Anticoagulation clinic improved time in therapeutic from 66.4% to 83.4% and achieved a rate of hospitalization 1.98/100 patient years versus 13.9 for usual physician office model and ER visit rate of 0.33/100 patient years versus 5.6 for usual physician model.

Financial Benefits:

• Transitions of Care: $1.5 million over 30 months;
• Heart Failure Clinic: $1.5 million over 27 months;
• COPD Clinic: $1.6 million per year over 2 years;
• Anticoagulation Clinic: $2.8 million over 3 years.

“Thank you to everyone whose hard work made this program successful, including current Memorial Health DOP Craig Baker, former Memorial Health DOP Britt Cummins, and the entire pharmacy team,” said Joseph Dula, Division Vice President, Clinical Operations for Pharmacy Systems, Inc. “By placing clinical pharmacists in primary care practices and eliminating gaps in care as patients move within the healthcare system and to home and back, our team has achieved significant clinical and financial outcomes that impact both patient outcomes and Memorial Health’s bottom line."

About Memorial Health
Memorial Health is an independent health system based in Marysville, Ohio, which consists of Memorial Hospital’s main campus and satellite outpatient locations including Memorial City Gate Medical Center; Memorial Urbana Medical Center; Memorial Hospital Outpatient Surgery Center; Memorial Gables – a skilled nursing facility; Memorial Medical Group – a network of physicians, mid-level providers and the Memorial Health Foundation.

About Pharmacy Systems, Inc. and Comprehensive Pharmacy Services
Pharmacy Systems, Inc., a Comprehensive Pharmacy Services (CPS) company, has partnered with Memorial Health since 1994 and currently supports pharmacy and supply chain operations. CPS was founded nearly 50 years ago and employs over 2,500 pharmacy professionals. It is the nation’s largest provider of pharmacy services to more than 700 hospitals and healthcare facilities. CPS helps their clients tackle complex problems such as hyper-inflated drug costs, specialty pharmacy, ambulatory/retail strategy, operational effectiveness and staffing efficiency. In addition, they address 340B programs, a variety of compliance concerns, and much more. CPS helps pharmacy leaders drive cost, quality and safety improvements across the continuum of care. For more information, visit http://www.cpspharm.com.

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