Pharmacists in general practice: recommendations resulting from team-based collaborative care.

Abstract

The Western Sydney Primary Health Network (PHN), WentWest, has been working to improve patient and health system outcomes by commissioning projects that enhance patient-focussed, team-based care. One such project is the WentWest General Practice Pharmacist Project, involving the integration of pharmacists within general practice sites. The aim of this study is to describe, classify and analyse recommendations made by pharmacists to GPs, resulting from patient consultations between pharmacists and patients in a general practice setting. This study was a multi-centre prospective observational study (April 2017-September 2017) investigating recommendations made by pharmacists integrated in a general practice setting. Thirteen general practice sites located in Western Sydney, NSW, Australia were involved in the study. The main outcome measures of this study include the classification of pharmacist recommendations and the percentage of those recommendations accepted by GPs. The pharmacists recorded the results from 618 patient consultations. These consultations resulted in 1601 recommendations of which 1404 (88%) were recorded as accepted. This study demonstrated that the recommendations made by pharmacists in general practice are well accepted by GPs and may lead to improvements in medication management and patient care.