‘Pharmacy coaching’ an attempt at hometown health-care reform

Tom Dodge | Dispatch

From left, Bob Febes talks with pharmacist Karlyn Neff about the drugs his wife, Linda, takes during a consultation at Schieber Family Pharmacy in Circleville.

The Columbus Dispatch Wednesday June 27, 2012 11:56 PM

CIRCLEVILLE, Ohio The U.S. health-care system cant just pop a pill to fix all that ails it.

But in Pickaway County, population 55,698, Berger Health System is turning to the people who dispense pills as a way to improve community health at a lower cost. The hospital is paying two independent pharmacies to teach recently discharged patients about their medications, hoping to head off noncompliance that can lead to costly and unnecessary hospital readmissions.

The hospital already has cut readmission rates by hiring a pharmacist to reconcile patients medications, ensuring that they wont have any adverse effects, before the patients are discharged. Between August 2011 and March 2012, the hospital halved its readmission rates for patients with congestive heart failure, pneumonia and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease compared with the year-earlier period, said Aaron Kanas, the health systems pharmacy director.

More than 1,000 consultations have taken place so far.

Now the health system wants to build on that success by joining with Schieber Family Pharmacy and Circleville Apothecary. Its goal: have pharmacists at those two independent pharmacies meet with 70 percent of discharged patients to learn more about their medications and how to take them.

If that goal is reached, the hospital will pay the two pharmacies a total of $75,000 to $100,000 each year in higher dispensing fees, a hospital spokesman said. The pharmacies also can be reimbursed $50 or so for each half-hour consultation with certain customers enrolled in Medicares Part D drug benefit.

The project, developed by Berger and Dublin-based Pharmacy Systems Inc., is designed to qualify for incentives built into the federal Affordable Care Act, the health-care overhaul whose constitutionality could be decided by the Supreme Court on Thursday.

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‘Pharmacy coaching’ an attempt at hometown health-care reform