School of Pharmacy named partner in $4.1 million grant to improve rural patient health
A three-year, $4.1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation will fund a medication management program in 23 rural Virginia counties. The program will be administered by Carilion New River Valley Medical Center in Christiansburg, in partnership with VCU School of Pharmacy, Aetna Healthcare and CVS/Caremark.
The award is part of the CMS Health Care Innovation Challenge, a $1 billion fund created to provide grants to applicants with compelling new ideas to deliver better health, improved care and lower costs for Medicare, Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program recipients. This project is one of 81 funded out of 3,000 applications.
The goal of the Improving Health for At-Risk Rural Patients project, aka IHARP, is to improve medication therapy and chronic disease state management. That, in turn, will improve health and reduce hospitalizations, emergency room visits and adverse drug events in patients with multiple chronic diseases.
“We truly believe this project can make a difference, both in quality and cost of care,” said John Piatkowski, Carilion Clinic vice president and CEO of Carilion New River Valley. “As physicians, we can manage patients’ medications when they are hospitalized, but after they leave, mistakes or failure to take medicines as required can result in serious consequences, unnecessary hospitalizations and worsening chronic conditions.”
According to Piatkowski, extending close medication management into outpatient settings can significantly improve the safety and efficacy of the medication administration.
More than 40 pharmacists from five rural hospitals, 17 primary care practices and multiple CVS pharmacies, in addition to Carilion New River Valley, will be trained in the collaborative pharmacist practice model, in which pharmacists play a more direct and active role with patients.
Pharmacists in the IHARP program will be trained via independent study, hands-on workshops and individual mentoring. They will learn more about patient assessment for nonadherence to medication, strategies to improve adherence, identification and resolution of medication-related problems, motivational interviewing techniques to encourage patient lifestyle changes, and effective communication within the health-care team.
It is estimated that full implementation of IHARP will help save $4.3 million in health-care costs during the three-year period.
Gary Matzke, VCU School of Pharmacy’s associate dean for clinical research and public policy, is co-principal investigator on the project and along with William Lee, director of pharmaceutical services for Carilion New River Valley and the Carilion Western Region hospitals. Together they will be responsible for project initiation, direction, hiring and overseeing the training of staff as well as monitoring and reporting the results. Matzke will oversee the development of patient-education literature on better control of chronic disease, and the transformative educational preparation of the hospital and primary care pharmacists will be provided through collaboration with the Canadian Pharmacists Association.
“This is a major step toward a new interprofessional health-care model for rural Americans,” said Matzke. “As an education institution, we are pleased to partner with Carilion on its design and implementation.”
School of Pharmacy assistant professor Leticia Moczygemba will lead the data analysis, program evaluation and assessment of the clinical, humanistic, and economic outcomes as well as patient and health care provider satisfaction. Jeffrey Delafuente, associate dean for academic affairs, and professor Patty Slattum will create and deliver the community pharmacist educational workforce development program that will equip these pharmacists with the skills needed to provide a consistently high level of patient care.
For more information about the CMS Health Care Innovation Awards, click here.
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