A study by a team consisting mostly of Kaiser clinical pharmacists published in Pharmacotherapy[1] finds that a very inexpensive pharmacist consult for cardiac patients reduces the cardiac death rate by more than 80% and — even though it’s a cardiac-specific drug regimen consult — also reduces the non-cardiac death rate by more than 95% vs. what Kaiser’s doctors achieved with usual care. Plus, even though it increases drug use, it earns a 56:1 ROI while reducing drug costs.
The implication: Kaiser’s doctors need Kaiser’s pharmacists to prevent their cardiac patients from dying, in general, but especially from non-cardiac causes…and that Kaiser is losing huge amounts of money if they don’t do this.
However, the study’s conclusions violate every “rule of plausibility” and are invalid. This study, unless its invalidity becomes more widely recognized, could also be used to justify expanded reimbursements for clinical pharmacist consults. Clinical pharmacists may or may not deserve expanded reimbursement, but justification for that reimbursement cannot be made based on studies like this one.
Quite a number of findings deserve mention. First, not getting the $1/patient-day of clinical pharmacist support given to the study group had apparently cost 30% of the retrospective control group patients their lives, vs. 3% of the intervention group.
