Category: Federal Forum Posters
Purpose: Clinical guidelines recommend against prescribing benzodiazepines or sedative hypnotics (BZRAs) to elderly patients, due to the increased risk of severe adverse events. Within our healthcare system, over 900 veterans aged 65 or greater are currently prescribed at least one of these medications. Reassessment of the risks and benefits for continued use is critical but limited by time constraints during healthcare visits and decreased access to care in rural settings. This quality improvement project aims to evaluate the success of an integrated population health model, led by clinical pharmacists, on deprescribing BZRAs, thereby increasing healthcare access for rural and elderly veterans.
Methods: This quality improvement project is a non-experimental cohort design to evaluate the impact of a population health service on increasing the number of rural and elderly veterans evaluated for medication safety and achieving successful deprescribing. This project meets criteria for quality improvement as set forth by the VASLC Institutional Review Board. Veterans will be identified through the VA Corporate Data Warehouse, a repository of medical and pharmacy data. The intervention arm will be identified based on exposure to the deprescribing pharmacy service, whereas the control arm will have no exposure. In the primary analysis, differences in the number of veterans with a completed medication safety review post index-date will be measured for the intervention and control groups using Fisher’s exact test. Index-dates will be assigned based on date of first contact (intervention group) or date of first primary care visit after program initiation (control group). In the secondary analysis, changes in the number of veterans successfully deprescribed in the intervention and control groups will be measured using Fisher’s exact test.
Results: not applicable
Conclusion: not applicable
Amber Heaton
– PGY1 Pharmacy Resident, VA Salt Lake City Health Care System, Sandy, UT145 Views