Pharmacist clinics based on specified health conditions

Ms Wung gives another example of one class of drug clinic, before moving onto the other models. She also introduces the 3 specified pharmacist clinics in her hospital.

Key concepts

One class of drug model:

• Antidepressant medication clinic. At this clinic, pharmacist aims to improve drug adherence. Though they are successful in achieving that, the long-term treatment outcome needs to be monitored analyzed to prove the pharmacists’ contribution to patient health.

One health condition model:

For this model, the pharmacists need to be specialized in the target disease/health condition. Ms Wung will explain 3 cases as examples: clinics for diabetes care, asthma education, and heart failure post-discharge clinic.

Numerous condition model:

Clinics focusing on geriatric care. Pharmacists perform comprehensive medication reviews for the elderly with 5 or more medications. They use the STOP or START criteria to survey the medications and identify potential inappropriate drugs. However, the short-term outcome cannot directly reflect the long-term treatment outcome.

Electronic communication models:

Telemedicine. It is already proven that telemedicine has positive effects on disease control. This also greatly increases the flexibility of both pharmacists and patients.

In Taipei Veterans General Hospital, we have 3 pharmacist clinics.

• Anticoagulation clinic (one class of drug model): It is a “one class of drug model” and once the patient enrolls in our service plane, the patient can choose to have face-to-face service or we contact the patient by phone. We also imply an electronic communication model in our clinics.

• Transplant clinic (one health condition model) It’s focusing on immune person drug management, and it is one health condition model.

• Medication therapy clinic (numerous conditions model) It deals with numerous conditions, So, it’s a numerous conditions model.

Share and learn:

• What do you think are the benefits of having pharmacist clinics on top of physician clinics?