Background:
Johns Hopkins Specialty Pharmacy provides clinical services for eligible multiple sclerosis (MS) patients on oral and self-injectable disease modifying therapies (DMTs) at the Johns Hopkins MS Precision Medicine Center of Excellence. Clinical services include dispensing medications, providing patient education, completing follow-up assessments, and patient safety monitoring. The specialty pharmacy works with the MS clinicians and their staff to help provide high quality patient care.
Objectives:
To describe integrated clinical services within a health system specialty pharmacy
Methods:
From July 1, 2019 through June 30, 2020, pharmacists performed telephonic clinical quarterly follow-up assessments with patients and reviewed laboratory results in the electronic medical record to ensure efficacy and safety of DMTs. Outcomes were obtained from patient reports regarding missed days from work or school due to MS-related symptoms, hospitalizations due to MS relapses, and vitamin D sufficiency. Average proportion of Days Covered (PDC) was used to measure adherence level. National Association of Specialty Pharmacys patient satisfaction survey was used to gauge patient loyalty and satisfaction.
Results:
Out of 708 assessments, 698 (98%) patients reported no missed days from work or school due to MS-related symptoms. The majority of patients (99.3%) reported no hospitalizations. After evaluation of 109 Vitamin D levels, results revealed that 86 (78.9%) were within normal limits and 23 (21.1%) were deficient. The specialty pharmacy also gathered results for quality and patient satisfaction and found that the PDC was 94% and the net promoter score was 82 compared to the average score of 79 for external specialty pharmacies surveyed.
Conclusions:
Pharmacist involvement in patient care demonstrate a positive impact for patients with MS who are on DMTs. Patients were noted to have great adherence with their DMTs and the majority of patients did not miss days from work or school and were not hospitalized due to MS-related symptoms. Moreover, patients were highly satisfied with the services provided at the pharmacy and were likely to continue receiving their comprehensive pharmacy care at our institution. This study highlights the value of pharmacists involvement in patient care and support the need for continuation of integrated clinical services in health system specialty pharmacy.
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