Patient’s satisfactory rates increase when provided with focused attention from pharmacists

A recent study was conducted by researchers at the Methodist University Hospital, in Memphis, Tennessee to evaluate the level of satisfaction in patients who received focused attention from pharmacists throughout their admission, including pharmacists talking with patients about the medication they were taking, reconciling patients’ medication before release and telephoning after release to explain their care. The results were measured through the ‘Hospital consumer assessment of healthcare providers and systems’ survey’ which evaluates the patients overall satisfaction on the care that they receive during admission, through a scoring system. The results were announced at American Society of Health System Pharmacists Midyear Clinical Meeting 2019 in Las Vegas.

The study consisted of one-thousand, seven-hundred and twenty-eight patients, and results revealed that when pharmacists made a post-discharge phone call to the patients, hospital thirty-day readmission rates plummeted by five-percent. Furthermore, pharmacists provided four-hundred and fourteen of the patients with the full transition of care education procedure, and survey scores revealed that those patients showed an increase of fourteen point seven percent in the overall average mean, thus resulting in a larger satisfaction rate.

Clinical Pharmacy Specialist at Methodist University Hospital, stated: “Pharmacists play a multitude of vital roles for patients during a hospital stay, including comprehensive medication management and ensuring medication safety. Now, they can feel increasingly confident about their role in helping patients when transitioning from different levels of care.”