BACKGROUND Blood pressure (BP) is poorly controlled among a large proportion of hypertensive outpatients. Innovative models of care are therefore needed to improve BP control. The Team-Based Care for improving Hypertension management (TBC-HTA) study aims to evaluate the effect of a team-based care (TBC) interprofessional intervention, involving nurses, community pharmacists and physicians, on B...

In some settings, steps are being taken to more fully integrate pharmacists in primary health care as a means of improving the public’s health and reducing drug-related iatrogenesis. Yet, evidence of improvement in health outcomes from pharmacists’ inputs is mixed; the diversity of research approaches and methodologies makes it difficult to reach an overall conclusion about it. A detailed revie...

PURPOSE Safety precautions for the use of U-500 insulin in a hospital setting are described. SUMMARY St. Vincent Indianapolis Hospital, a 500-bed community hospital, formed a committee to develop a U-500 insulin policy to address the unique considerations required for this drug at all steps of the medication management process. An order set was designed by the multidisciplinary team to standa...

PURPOSE To evaluate the impact of a community-based pharmacist-led face-to-face counseling program on medication adherence for patients who were new to therapy (NTT) for statin medications. PATIENTS AND METHODS This retrospective cohort study evaluated a program that was implemented in 76 national community pharmacies located in the midwest USA. It consisted of two face-to-face patient counse...

Purpose. Monitoring patients' international normalized ratio (INR) within a family medicine setting can be challenging. Novel methods of doing this effectively and in a timely manner are important for patient care. The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of a pharmacist-led point-of-care (POC) INR clinic. Methods. At a community-based academic Family Health Team in Toronto,...