Ensure success by tying in the pharmacist
There are plenty of reasons to get the pharmacist directly involved with the treatment of heart failure patients. Drug therapy regimens can call for multiple medications to be used at one time, such as digoxin, ACE inhibitors, beta-blockers, and diuretics.
It’s likely that patients have comorbidities and are taking medication to control these conditions as well. Someone has to help the patient keep track of medication schedules, to be sure no drugs have been prescribed that could have harmful interactions with each other and get a sense if the patient will comply with the drug regimen.
"I believe that a pharmacist is the one most suited for this," says Emmanuel Saltiel, PharmD, FCSHP, a clinical pharmacist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
It’s not yet clear how the pharmacists at Cedars will be communicating with other team members and even the patients. The pharmacists could be available to speak to patients directly, which has an advantage of being more seamless and getting answers quickly, he says. But to do it, the pharmacists would have to have quick access to patient files. Pharmacists would not want to make recommendations without having all information available to them. "Partial information could be dangerous," he says.
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