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“To describe the effect of integrating a pharmacist into the general

practice team on the timeliness and completion of pharmacist-conducted medication reviews. A pharmacist was integrated into an Australian inner-city suburb general practice medical centre to provide medication reviews for practice patients. A retrospective analysis of medication reviews with two time periods was conducted: pre-integration of the practice pharmacist and post-integration of the practice pharmacist. In an effort to obtain a measure of external validity the data were compared to data from Selleck Ibrutinib the Division of General Practice in which the medical centre is located. There were 70 patients referred for medication review in the pre-integration phase and 314 patients referred in the post-integration phase. The time to complete the medication review process was significantly reduced from a median of 56 days to 20 days with a practice pharmacist. Prior to having a practice pharmacist 52% of patients did not have the service billed by the general practitioner, which was reduced to 6% during the post-integration

phase. Trichostatin A cell line The results from this trial show that the integration of a pharmacist into the general practice team was associated with an increase in the timeliness and completion rate of medication reviews. “
“Worldwide pharmacists play an increasingly important role in pharmacovigilance. Lareb Intensive Monitoring (LIM) in the Netherlands is a new form of active pharmacovigilance where pharmacists play a key role. Patients using drugs which are monitored are identified in the pharmacy PI-1840 and invited to participate in the active monitoring. Not all invited patients participate. This study aimed to investigate non-response bias in LIM, as well as reasons for non-response in order to identify barriers to participation. The study population consisted of patients who received a

first dispensation of an antidiabetic drug monitored with LIM between 1 July 2010 and 28 February 2011. Possible non-response bias was investigated by comparing age, gender and the number of drugs used as co-medication. Reasons for non-response were investigated using a postal questionnaire. Respondents were on average 4.5 years younger than non-respondents and used less co-medication. There were no differences regarding gender. The main reason for non-response was that information in the pharmacy was lacking. Differences between respondents and non-respondents should be taken into account when analysing and generalising data collected through LIM, as this might contribute to non-response bias. The relatively high response to the postal questionnaire, together with the answers about reasons for non-response, show that patients are willing to participate in a web-based intensive monitoring system, when they are informed and invited in the pharmacy.