Pharmacy student involvement in population health management of statin quality measures

Abstract

Background Pharmacists have demonstrated their value in population health management (PHM). With appropriate training, advanced pharmacy practice experience (APPE) students are also well positioned to participate in PHM. Methods At Providence Medical Foundation, a PHM workflow was remodeled to be more standardized and incorporate APPE students into the statin quality measure improvement process. This was driven by institutional goals for quality improvement in patient care and creating a better experiential teaching opportunity. APPE students underwent three training sessions and completed clinical review of patient charts, determined statin eligibility, and completed patient outreach. Rates of statin initiation and student feedback were collected. The rates of statins initiated or declined with this new workflow were retrospectively compared to a previous year's workflow, which was pharmacist‐led. Intervention Review pharmacy student involvement with PHM, including statin initiation rates for quality measure improvement as well as student feedback and learning. Results Among the 543 patients included in the remodeled workflow, students started statins for 75 (13.8%) patients while 114 (21%) patients declined statins. Among the 829 patients included in the previous year's traditional workflow, pharmacists started statins for 102 (12.3%) patients while 167 (20.1%) patients declined statins. There was no statistically significant difference in rates of statins started (odds ratio [OR] 0.88; 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.63–1.22; p = 0.41) and statins declined (OR 0.95; CI 0.72–1.25; p = 0.73) between the two groups. Student feedback on this activity was positive with self‐reported improvement in confidence, clinical knowledge, and communication skills. Conclusions Incorporating pharmacy students into PHM was a valuable learning experience for students and effective for initiating statins to assist with quality measures. Students can be an asset to the team in PHM and help ease resource shortages.