Findings from Boston Medical Center Broaden Understanding of Pharmacy (A novel pharmacy liaison program to address health-related social needs at an urban safety-net hospital): Drugs and Therapies – Pharmacy

2023 JUN 06 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Researchers detail new data in pharmacy. According to news reporting from New Haven, Connecticut, by NewsRx journalists, research stated, “Disclaimer: In an effort to expedite the publication of articles, AJHP is posting manuscripts online as soon as possible after acceptance. Accepted manuscripts have been peer-reviewed and copyedited, but are posted online before technical formatting and author proofing.”

The news reporters obtained a quote from the research from Boston Medical Center: “These manuscripts are not the final version of record and will be replaced with the final article (formatted per AJHP style and proofed by the authors) at a later time. Patients with unmet health-related social needs (HRSNs) often experience poor health outcomes and have high levels of healthcare utilization. We describe a program where dually trained pharmacy liaison-patient navigators (PL-PNs) screen for and address HRSNs while providing medication management services to patients with high levels of acute care utilization in a Medicaid Accountable Care Organization. We are unaware of prior studies that have described this PL-PN role. We analyzed case management spreadsheets for the 2 PL-PNs who staffed the program to identify the HRSNs that patients faced and the ways PL-PNs addressed them. We administered surveys, including an 8-item client satisfaction questionnaire (CSQ-8), to characterize patient perceptions of the program. Initially, 182 patients (86.6% English speaking, 80.2% from a marginalized racial or ethnic group, and 63.2% with a significant medical comorbidity) were enrolled in the program. Non-English-speaking patients were more likely to receive the minimum intervention dose (completion of an HRSN screener). Case management spreadsheet data (available for 160 patients who engaged with the program) indicated that 71% of participants faced at least one HRSN, most often food insecurity (30%), lack of transportation (21%), difficulty paying for utilities (19%), and housing insecurity (19%). Forty-three participants (27%) completed the survey with an average CSQ-8 score of 27.9, indicating high levels of satisfaction with the program. Survey participants reported receiving medication management services, social needs referrals, health-system navigation assistance, and social support.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “Integration of pharmacy medication adherence and patient navigation services is a promising approach to streamline the HRSN screening and referral process at an urban safety-net hospital.”

For more information on this research see: A novel pharmacy liaison program to address health-related social needs at an urban safety-net hospital. American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy, 2023. The publisher for American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy is Oxford University Press (OUP).

A free version of this journal article is available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ajhp/zxad113.

Our news journalists report that more information may be obtained by contacting Caroline G Borden, Boston Medical Center, Boston, MA and Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, United States. Additional authors for this research include Erin M Ashe, Pablo Buitron de la Vega, Vi Gast, Tracey Saint-Phard, Julianna Brody-Fialkin, Julia Power, Na Wang, Karen E Lasser.

(Our reports deliver fact-based news of research and discoveries from around the world.)