An American study has shown that increasing the number of clinical pharmacists employed at hospitals reduces the overall cost of hospital care. Conversely, it showed that employing more pharmacists just to dispense leads to increased care costs.
The study, carried out at the Texas Tech University health science centre, involved analysis of data from 1,016 general medical and surgical hospitals - 30 per cent of all hospitals in the United States of America - that accounted for 34 per cent of hospital admissions in the country.
It found that drug use evaluation (at 898 hospitals), drug information (232), adverse drug report monitoring (684), drug protocol management (355) and medication admission history services (30) were associated with savings of over $5bn annually.
Pharmacy involvement in two services - clinical research and total parenteral nutrition - was associated with increased health care costs.
Presenting the research at an American College of Clinical Pharmacy forum in Monterey, California, on April 4, the study's author (Dr C. Bond) said: "The staffing variables were the strongest predictors of total health care costs in this study."
For clinical pharmacist staffing, the greatest decrease in care costs (48 per cent) was seen at staffing levels of between 1.11 and 3.23 clinical pharmacists for every 100 beds