Guest Commentary: Coming Soon to a Pharmacy Near You

Erin Thomson, MPH
Project Manager
Jefferson School of Population Health

As Congress is working to pass a health reform bill, efforts should be made to ensure that the legislation includes provisions to improve the quality of health care. This would require quality reporting by all members of the health care system, including pharmacy practice. Pharmacists are an integral component of the health care team and provide valuable knowledge and skills that increase the quality of patient outcomes.

The Pharmacy Quality Alliance (PQA) partnered with the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) in the development of 15 pharmacy performance measures. The measures are aimed at improving medication adherence, ensuring adequate drug therapy for patients with diabetes and asthma, and helping to ensure appropriate drug therapy in the elderly population. During 2007, PQA developed and pilot‐tested a questionnaire to gather consumer feedback on the quality of pharmacy services. This questionnaire was developed in accordance with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality guidelines for development of Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems surveys.

In order to determine the resource requirements for collecting and aggregating prescription claims data and calculating the 15 PQA-endorsed measures, PQA funded 5 Phase I Demonstration Projects. The demonstration sites included a health plan, a community pharmacy corporation and three health plan coalitions. The demonstration project was focused on generating pharmacy performance reports using the measures and collecting patient experiences with pharmacy services using the PQA-sponsored survey. The sites anticipate completion of Phase I by the end of 2009.

The Jefferson School of Population Health, in partnership with CNA, was awarded an AHRQ grant to conduct an independent external evaluation of the PQA Phase I Demonstration Project. Two survey instruments, including a Qualitative Interview Guide and a Quantitative Pharmacist Survey, were developed and pilot-tested. The instruments were designed to assess the challenges, issues, and technical problems that were encountered during the project as well as the operational costs and non-financial burdens encountered in collecting the data, generating reports, and using the performance data.

JSPH staff are currently conducting the qualitative on-site interviews of demonstration project staff and will be disseminating the quantitative pharmacist survey to field pharmacists early in the New Year. We are eagerly anticipating the results as we seek to determine the feasibility of engaging pharmacy in quality measurement strategies and look forward to sharing our results later next year. If you have questions or would like additional information about this initiative, please contact Erin Thomson, MPH (erin.thomson@jefferson.edu) or Laura Pizzi, PharmD, MPH (laura.pizzi@jefferson.edu).