E-drug: Indicators for community pharmacies? (cont'd)
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Mr. Nielsen,
My Center studies the process and outcomes of drug therapy from a
social system perspective. Based on literature review, we have
developed some ideas about what influences the outcomes of drug
therapy and what would be required for safe effective and humane
drug therapy. Then we developed indicators to reflect both appropriate
drug use processes and outcomes. The process indicators are
intended to be applied to community pharmacy prescription data. The
more sophisticated the community pharmacy information system, the
more efficient and powerful the indicators can be, but they could be
applied (with labor) to prescription profiles on paper or medical records
from a doctor's office.
Our indicators reflect such things as duration of therapy, timing of
repeat prescriptions, and monitoring of outcomes among others. Some
are currently in development while many have already been tested for
feasibility in U.S. pharmacies.
I feel that I must explain this because my impression is that many
(most?) people working with disadvantaged populations think or act as
if drug access (product distribution or prescribing) is somehow more
important than effective drug use. This ignores the obvious fact that
the countries with the best access to drug products also have the
greatest problem of preventable drug related morbidity and that the
countries with the poorest access must also make the best possible
use of the drugs that they do manage to obtain.
If you would like some help about drug use indicators, please e-mail
back to me.
Cheers.
Prof. Charles D. Hepler
College of Pharmacy, University of Florida
Director, DuBow Family Ctr. for Research in Pharmaceutical Care
+1-352-392-6218 (Voice)
+1-352-392-7782 (Fax)
e-mail: hepler@cop.ufl.edu
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