Needs assessment

Wung goes through the first step of setting up a pharmacist clinic in detail, explaining how to access needs of the population.

Key concepts

Needs assessment is the process of finding out the needs of the population to determine the focus of the clinic.

Needs assessment strategies:

• Analyze the most frequent health conditions that lead to hospitalization or ER admissions.

• Analyze the prescription record from the emergency department. Find out, for example, the top 5 most frequent prescript.

• Evaluating compliance with standard care. Find out if patients have received standard care, if they have not, it is a possible area to focus on.

• Newly marketed drugs. Pharmacists are usually the most up to date with new medication.

• ICD-9 codes ICD-10 codes. These codes record adverse drug effects and medical conditions. Searching the hospital system for the most common ICD-10/9 codes can identify potential target patient group.

The TVGH model:

The anticoagulation clinic was established because there was poor oral anticoagulant management and TVGH. This led to frequent hospitalization and ER admissions. Between 2009 and 2010, 452 patients reported to the ER due to adverse drug events, and warfarin related cases was the second most frequent.

The transplant clinic was set up because immunosuppressants prescribed for transplant patients require very specific dosage. Pharmacists are best trained to manage this.

The medication therapy clinic targets patients taking new drugs like direct-acting-antivirals (DAA) which have multiple drug-drug interactions. Thus, physicians would refer patients taking these types of drugs or patients on multiple prescriptions to the medication therapy clinic.

Share and learn:

• How else can you determine the needs of patients?

• Besides targeting patient needs, are there other ways to determine the focus of pharmacist clinics?