An Evaluation of Diabetes-Related Measures of Control After 6 Months of Clinical Pharmacy Specialist Intervention

Abstract

Purpose: To evaluate the effectiveness of a pharmacist management regarding the percentages of patients meeting American Diabetes Association (ADA) treatment goals for diabetes and specific Veterans Health Administration (VA) performance measures individually and in combination after 6 months of intervention. Methods: We retrospectively evaluated the electronic medical record of all new patients seen between October 1, 2007 and March 31, 2009, with an A1c >7%. Primary objectives included the percentages of patients meeting ADA treatment goals individually and in combination after 6 months in addition to the percentage meeting the 3 VA performance goals individually and in combination. Results: One-hundred and ninety-seven patients met inclusion criteria. There were 6% of patients who met all ADA goals and 79% who met all VA performance measure goals at study end. Individual goal analyses revealed 43% of patients at a goal A1c of <7%, 55% of patients were at low-density lipoprotein (LDL) goal, 45% of patients at systolic blood pressure (SBP) goal, and 51% of patients at diastolic blood pressure (DBP) goal. Evaluation for VA performance measures showed that 91% patients at goal for A1c, 55% at LDL goal, 70% at systolic BP goal, and 87% met diastolic BP goal. Conclusions: Six months of pharmacist intervention resulted in improvement in patients achieving ADA and VA performance measure goals individually and in combination.