Background

Clinicians play an important role in containing pharmaceutical spending at the patient level, as well as ensuring efficacy and quality outcomes, yet little research has examined how to achieve this goal.

Measures

Using auditing and feedback (A&F) as part of a Pharmacy and Therapeutics (P&T) Committee, we evaluated our community-based hospice program's prescribing habits for opioids, antipsychotics, and antidepressants and calculated oral pharmaceutical prescription costs per-patient-day. Quality of care was reflected by patient pain scores in electronic medical records.

Intervention

Our P&T Committee adopted an A&F approach to monitor and assess provider prescribing habits and cost. An already-existing pain quality improvement program assessed care quality.

Outcomes

Pain relief either improved or was maintained while medication costs were reduced by over $1.00 per-patient-day from 2010 to 2011.

Conclusions/lessons learned

An active, hospice P&T Committee featuring A&F can significantly affect medication costs for a hospice program while maintaining or improving patient outcomes.