Using simulation to model clinical medication reviews in community pharmacies

摘要

Providing enhanced clinical services to complex patients is one way that community pharmacies are responding to the shift in healthcare to outcomes-based performance over fee-for-services. One enhanced service that is becoming more popular is comprehensive medication reviews (CMRs). CMRs allow pharmacists to educate the patient on how to correctly manage their medications and discover any possible drug therapy problems (DTPs) that could be effecting the patient's adherence and/or health outcomes. Currently, there is not a specific workflow or process for the best way to perform CMRs in a community pharmacy setting. We developed discrete event simulation models to test different CMR workflows in two different pharmacies and determine the effects on patient waiting time and staff utilization.