Reprint of: Pharmacist-driven deprescribing initiative in primary care

Background

Polypharmacy, a broad term to describe the use of numerous and often unnecessary medications, has been connected to frailty, hospital admissions, falls, and even mortality. The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) developed the VIONE (vital, important, optional, not indicated, and every medication has an indication) dashboard to identify patients with polypharmacy and serve as a framework for deprescribing of medications across VHA facilities where it is used in a variety of practice settings by different disciplines.

Objective

This study aimed to describe the implementation of a pharmacist-led, system-wide, deprescribing initiative in the primary care setting.

Practice description

Interdisciplinary education was provided through academic detailing. Subsequently, patients were identified for inclusion in the project using the VIONE dashboard focusing on those at highest risk of polypharmacy and moving down to the lowest risk. Interested patients underwent a medication reconciliation. A clinical pharmacist practitioner (CPP) then contacted the patient to discuss potential deprescribing options. Recommendations were relayed to the primary care provider (PCP) for final approval and communicated to the patient by the pharmacy team.

Practice innovation

Primary care CPPs (n = 3) integrated deprescribing into their standard workload. This service was implemented in the primary care setting across an entire health care system consisting of 16 different primary care teams.

Evaluation methods

The initiative’s impact was measured by the number of discontinued medications, the acceptance rate of recommendations by the PCP, the potential annualized cost avoidance, and the number of patients referred to CPP medication management clinics.

Results

Among 63 patients, a total of 352 medications were deprescribed resulting in a potential annualized cost avoidance of $184,221. The acceptance rate of discontinuation recommendations was 96.7%. Subsequently, 25.4% of patients were referred to pharmacist-led clinics for disease state management.

Conclusion

Embedding deprescribing into standard CPP workflow within the primary care setting facilitated a way for polypharmacy reduction and allowed the expansion of pharmacy-led services at VA Butler Healthcare System.