Background: There is a growing body of evidence which supports that a pharmacist conducted medication review increases the health outcomes for patients. A pharmacist integrated into a primary care medical centre may offer many potential advantages in conducting medication reviews in this setting however research describing this is presently limited.
Objective: To compare medication review reports conducted by pharmacists practicing externally to a medical centre to those medication review reports conducted by an integrated practice pharmacist. The secondary objective was to compare medication review reports conducted by pharmacists in the patient's home to those conducted in the medical centre.
Setting: A primary care medical centre, Brisbane, Australia.
Method: A retrospective analysis of pharmacist conducted medication reviews prior to and after the integration of a pharmacist into a medical centre.
Main outcome measures: Types of drug related problems identified by the Pharma cists, recommended intervention for drug related problems made by the pharmacist, and the extent of implementation of pharmacist recommendations by the general practitioner.
Results: The primary drug related problem reported in the practice pharmacist phase was Additional therapy required as compared to Precautions in the external pharmacist phase. The practice pharmacist most frequently recommended to add drug with Additional monitoring recommended most often in the external pharmacists. During the practice pharmacist phase 71 % of recommendations were implemented and was significantly higher than the external pharmacist phase with 53 % of recommendations implemented (p < 0.0001). Two of the 23 drug related problem domains differed significantly when comparing medication reviews conducted in the patient's home to those conducted in the medical centre.