Impact of outpatient pharmacy services collaborating with oncologists at an outpatient clinic for outpatient chemotherapy prescription orders

Abstract

Objectives: This retrospective study was conducted to evaluate the impact of a service in which clinical pharmacists collaborated with oncologists at an outpatient clinic on chemotherapy order prescriptions and adverse drug reaction management in outpatient cancer chemotherapy. Methods: This was a single-center retrospective cohort study. Subjects were patients who received pharmacist services at an outpatient clinic in 6 treatment divisions at the National Cancer Center Hospital East from June to September 2016. Pharmacist interventions were categorized and assessed for impact by 2 pharmacists according to previously published methods. Results: The 6 pharmacists worked a total of 1396 hours, providing 1645 pharmacy interventions to 3419 patients. Of the 1645 interventions, 459 interventions (27.9%) involved chemotherapy order prescriptions. The 459 interventions for chemotherapy prescriptions were categorized according to the previously reported categories “drug therapy safety” (n = 330, 71.9%), “other” (n = 91, 19.8%), “drug therapy efficacy” (n = 28, 6.1%), and “drug therapy indication” (n = 10, 2.2%). Of the 91 interventions categorized as “other,” the 2 most frequent types of interventions were “confirmation from pharmacists to oncologists about laboratory test order” (n = 54, 11.7%) and “consultation from oncologists to pharmacists about chemotherapy regimen” (n = 23, 5.0%). Most interventions were identified as having “no error” (n = 369, 80.4%), while 8 interventions (1.8%) were identified as being “potentially lethal” or “serious.” Moreover, 92.8% of interventions were identified as being “extremely significant,” “very significant” or “significant.” Conclusions: This study clarified the benefits of outpatient pharmacy services in which pharmacists collaborate with oncologists at an outpatient clinic on outpatient chemotherapy prescription orders.