Background Studies have demonstrated that blood pressure (BP) control can be improved when clinical pharmacists assist with patient management. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a physician/pharmacist intervention to improve BP control. Methods This was a prospective, cluster-randomized controlled clinical trial with clinics randomized to control (n=3) or intervention (n=3) groups. The study enrolled 402 patients with uncontrolled hypertension (mean age 58.3 years). Clinical pharmacists made drug-therapy recommendations to physicians based on national guidelines. Research nurses performed BP measurements and 24-hour BP monitoring. Results Guideline adherence scores increased from 49.4 ± 19.3 at baseline to 53.4 ± 18.1 at 6 months (9% increase) in the control group and from 40.4 ± 22.6 to 62.8 ± 13.5 (57% increase) in the intervention group (p=0.089 adjusted comparison between groups). Mean BP decreased 6.8/4.5 and 20.7/9.7 mm Hg in the control and intervention groups, respectively, (p<0.05 for between-group systolic BP (SBP) comparison). The adjusted difference in SBP was −12.0 (95% CI: −24.0, 0.0) mm Hg, while the difference in diastolic BP (DBP) was −1.8 (CI: −11.9, 8.3). The 24-hour BP levels showed similar effect sizes. BP was controlled in 29.9% of patients in the control group and 63.9% in the intervention group (adjusted odds ratio 3.2; CI: 2.0, 5.1; p<0.001). Conclusions A physician/pharmacist collaborative intervention achieved significantly better mean BP and overall BP control rates when compared to a control group. Additional research should be conducted to evaluate efficient strategies to implement team-based chronic disease management.

This was a prospective, cluster randomized controlled trial in patients with (adjusted odds ratio, 8.9; CI, p<.001

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PCPs across the US have an active role in cancer patient management. Determining the optimal interface between PCPs and oncologists in delivering and coordinating cancer care is an important area for future research.

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Although pharmacist-provided interventions did not demonstrate statistically significant improvements in clinical outcomes over the study period, study results did show that pharmacists were effective at increasing the number of days that patients spent engaging in healthy diet and diabetes self-care activities. Addressing lifestyle and self-care behaviors can be a beneficial component of a pharmacist-provided extended diabetes care service.

PHRs can engage older adults for better medication self-management; however, features that motivate continued use will be needed. Longer-term studies of continued users will be required to evaluate the impact of these changes in behavior on patient health outcomes.

To date, service classification research has primarily taken a macro view, creating service typologies or taxonomies by using dimensions such as customer contact or degree of labor intensity. Such classification schemes, though helpful in deciphering critical management issues and positioning strategies between service industries, tend to treat an entire industry, such as airlines, as a single homogenous entity. However, organizations in the same industry often use intangible resources, such as entrepreneurial orientation processes, to compete with one another. Resource-advantage theory suggests that organizations utilize intangible resources to build long-term strategies and a sustainable competitive advantage leading to superior performance. We developed organization clusters based on entrepreneurial orientation as intangible resources to classify organizations within a retailing industry. Using data from the retail pharmacy industry, we tested if the entrepreneurial orientations of the resultant groups within the pharmacy industry were related to their perception of the environment, organizational factors, and performance outcomes. The operationalization of the construct of entrepreneurial orientation is one of the contributions of the study. #