DEERFIELD, Ill. — Walgreen Co. is piloting a pharmacist-led medication therapy management (MTM) program in a post-acute care facility in Florida.
Walgreens said Thursday that through a collaboration with Greystone Healthcare Management at the Lady Lake Specialty Center in Lady Lake, Fla., the participants aim to spur medication adherence and reduce readmissions rates for post-acute care patients.
The program uses Walgreens pharmacists to deliver medication and counseling to patients before discharge from the 145-bed center. After discharge, patients receive a follow-up call from a Walgreens pharmacist within 72 hours to help them understand and adhere to their medication regimens.
"Walgreens pharmacists are experts at helping patients understand and adhere to their medication therapy programs," Marlin Hutchens, Walgreens’ market vice president for Florida, said in a statement. "By expanding beyond our thousands of community pharmacies and into innovative health care settings like Greystone’s Lady Lake Specialty Center, we’ve demonstrated the valuable role our pharmacists can play as part of a patient’s care team, helping to improve outcomes while reducing costs."
After a review of the Lady Lake center pilot’s results, Greystone will explore expansion of the Walgreens MTM program to more settings in its 2,727-bed network of skilled rehabilitation facilities throughout the nation, the companies said.
"Discharge from a hospital or post-acute care setting can be a hectic time for patients and their families, and sometimes it’s difficult to make a trip to the pharmacy or to understand a new medication regimen," stated Scott Clark, vice president of strategy and implementation for Greystone. "Having a clinically trained pharmacist deliver prescriptions and information directly to a patient’s bedside makes compliance easier, and an ongoing dialogue with the pharmacist helps patients and caretakers transition to a new setting."
Walgreens added that it has participated in similar programs in hospital settings that have helped improve patient care and satisfaction and raised Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) scores.
For example, the drug store chain in November announced a program with DeKalb Medical in Georgia in which the health system improved its HCAHPS top box scores for patient communications on medication significantly over the 90-day period after the program’s launch, and DeKalb continues to see those scores climb, Walgreens said.
