Impact of Prescription Inquiries by Community Pharmacists on Patient Outcomes Based on Laboratory Data

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a nationwide movement to provide patient laboratory data on the out-of-hospital prescription. As Kyokuyaku Midorigaoka Pharmacy routinely receives these prescriptions, we examined whether our prescription inquiries based on laboratory data changed after the printing of laboratory data on prescriptions. In this study, we evaluated a total of 356 prescription inquiries over the six years from 2015 to 2020, before and after the printing of laboratory data. The ratio of inquiries based on laboratory data after the printing was 36.5 times higher compared to that of inquiries before the printing. We investigated whether our inquiries could improve the patients’ laboratory data through prescription change. As a result, the laboratory data, eGFR, which indicates renal function, and high potassium were significantly improved in the group of patients whose prescription was changed by the pharmacist’s inquiry (P = 0.016 and 0.0025, respectively). Furthermore, when investigating the inquiries related to only drugs which cause kidney injury, improvement of patient eGFR was significantly higher in the group of patients whose prescription was changed by the pharmacist’s inquiry than that in the group whose prescription was not changed (P = 0.025). These results suggest that inquiries by pharmacists have led to improved patient outcomes at least with regard to renal function. To our knowledge, the present study is the first in Japan to demonstrate the usefulness of community pharmacists’ inquiries for patient outcomes.