Dive Brief:
- Seven years ago, Marion General Hospital, a health system with locations cutting across two counties in Marion, IN, sold its pharmacy to Walgreens. Ultimately, the agreement not only cut readmissions for Marion General, but also gave birth to WellTransitions, a pharmacist-driven program offered by the 8,200-store retail chain.
- A few years after Walgreens purchased Marion General's pharmacy, the head pharmacist proposed a program in which pharmacists would deliver meds to the bedside, reconcile those medications with the patient's existing regimen, and do periodic follow-up phone calls with the patient or caregiver. The idea grew into the alpha site for the WellTransitions program. Marion General is now a customer of WellTransitions, in which Walgreens works directly with hospital staff doing everything its founders envisioned.
- The results of the program have been substantial for both partners. According to an April 2014 study, in which Walgreens studied 744 matched pairs of WellTransitions patients and non-patients retrospectively, patients in WellTransitions were 46% less likely to have an unplanned hospital readmission within 30 days than the control group.
Dive Insight:
It's hard to argue with results like the ones posted by WellTransitions, whose results are among the best we've seen anywhere when it comes to reducing needless readmissions.
But research abounds that programs that make pharmacists part of care transition teams achieve significant results. To pick just one example, a follow-up program for recently discharged patients at Chapel Hill, NC-based UNC Hospitals—including pharmacists, physicians and social workers—reported last April that it had cut readmission rates within 30 days by 65%.
It's worth noting that the results achieved by WellTransitions include a self-selection bias, as patients must sign up to participate. It stands to reason that people who choose the program may have a higher motivation to get healthy than non-participants. Still, these are number worth considering nonetheless. If nothing else, it seems clear that involving pharmacists in readmission-reduction programs is a smart idea.