SYMPOSIUM ON DRUG UTiliZATION 

REVIEW ISSUES 

SUMMARY REPORT 

tIlVICE$. 

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OFFICE OF INSPECTOR GENERAL 

OFFICE OF EVALUATION AND INSPECTIONS 

AUGUST 1990 
SYMPOSIUM ON DRUG UTILIZATION 

REVIEW ISSUES 

SUMMARY REPORT 

Richard P. Kusserow 

INSPECTOR GENERAL 

OEI-01-89-89010 AUGUST 1990 
SYMPOSIUM PRESENTERS€

Dr. Jerome Avorn 

Associate Professor 

Harvard Medical School 

Director€

Program for the Analysis of Clinical Strategies€

Dr. Jerry Gurwitz 

Instructor in Medicine, 

Harvard Medical School 

Dr. Charles Hepler 

Chairman€

Department of Pharmacy Health Care Administration€

University of Florida 

Calvin Knowlton 

Associate Professor 

Philadelphia College of Pharmacy€

President€

Amherst Pharmacy 

Dr. Wayne Ray 

Director€

Department of Pharmacoepidemiology, 

Vanderbilt University School of Medicine 

Moderator€
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Prescribing For The Elderly And Nursing Home Use. . 

Medication Prescribing And Utilzation In The Nursing Home: 

Literature Review 

Preventing Drug-Related Morbidity 

Intervention Opportunities In Community Pharmacy Practice 

Computerized Databases For Educational Drug Utilzation Review. . . 

Policy And Practice Recommendations For Drug Ut-.ization Review. . 

Research Questions Identified In The Symposium 

On Drug Utiization Review . 19 
SUMMARY REPORT 

The idea for this symposium began in mid-l989 when the Office of the Inspector General 

published a report on drg utilization review (DUR) and the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage 

Act. This report considered a number of issues: 

mismedication problems among the elderly; 

the gaps in the health care system that affect mismedication; and 

initiatives the Administration and the Congress could take to address some of those 

problems. 

When the original DUR report was released, it became clear that it identified several very 

complex problems. This symposium represented an attempt to expand on thos' issues and to 

bring together scientists, practitioners, and policymakers to pursue these issues further. 

Prescribing For The Elderly And Nursing Home Use 

Dr. Jerr Gurwitz of Harvard Medical School began the symposium with a discussion from 

the physicians ' perspective of the unique aspects of prescribing for the elderly. He pointed out 

that pharacotherapy is perhaps the single most important medical intervention in the care of 

the elderly, and its proper performance requires a special understanding of the changes in 

physiology and pharmacology that occur with aging. Cross-sectional and longitudinal studies 

involving community-dwelling populations indicate that increasing age is often accompanied 

by reductions in the physiologic reserve of many organ systems, reductions that are separate 

from the effects of disease. The ability of an organism to maintain homeostasis in the face of 

an external threat often depends upon the reserve capacity of the hear, the lungs , the kidneys, 

the liver, etc. These changes have important implications for the biological basis of drug 

effects in the elderly.


Pharacokinetics is most simply defined as what the body does to a drg. Changes in 

pharacokinetics that occur with advancing age provide an important basis for concern about 

adverse drug reactions (ADRs) in the old. For certain medications, drg distrbution can vary 

importantly with advancing age. The volume of distrbution is the theoretical space in a given 

patient that is available for a paricular drug to occupy. An age-related increase in body fat at 

the expense of muscle can lead to a greater volume of distrbution in older patients for some 

medications. These changes are more prominent for drgs like diazepam and flurazepam 

highly-lipid soluble benzodiazepines prescribed for anxiety and insomnia. 

Pharacodynamics is the study of the. sensitivity of the organism o a drg. The aging process 

appears to be associated with an 
 increase in the sensitivity to many medications commonly 

prescribed to the elderly. Changes in pharmacodynamics, together with age-related changes in 
pharacokinetics, could well be expected to place the elderly patient at some increased risk 

for ADRs. 

A few studies suggest a trend toward increasing risk of ADRs with advancing age, although 

this conclusion is open to question because none of the reviewed investigations controlled f0f 

potentially important covarates including clinical status, length of hospitalization, and 

number of medications taen concurrently. Findings do support, however, an obvious 

association between the number of drgs taken concurrently and the risk of ADRs. More 

importantly, the number of drugs that a patient is receiving is directly related to the number of 

coexisting diseases. 

The diagnosis of drg-induced illness in elderly patients is frequently complicated by the 

tendency by patients, families, and even physicians to mislabel many symptoms as signs of 

just growing old. " One maneuver with very useful diagnostic as well as therapeutic potential 

is the "therapeutic untral" of a medication of dubious value that is currently in a patier;r 

regimen. Older patients are at risk of accumulating layers and layers of drug therapy as they 

move through time. Medications used for symptomatic relief (e. , of insomnia) are fairly easy 

to "prune " as their careful removal does not put the patient at significant medical risk. 

More challenging is the reassessment of medications that may be vital to the patient s regimen 

or may be presenting the risk of toxicity with no therapeutic benefit, such as digoxin 

quinidine, thiazides , antihypertensives, and anticonvulsants. Some clinicians may argue that if 

patients are stable and in no overt distress, it is too risky to change their regimen by removing 

drugs that may not be needed. However, it is often not appreciated that any medication that 

has the potential for toxicity with no continuing indication can represent a "time bomb" to a 

patient. 

The available evidence suggests some useful questions which physicians should use far more 

often concerning drgs prescribed for an older patient: 

Can I avoid using a drug here? 

Could stopping a medication help with the patient s symptoms? 

Is this the lowest feasible dose? 

Does this drug have any particular side effects that are more likely to occur in an 

elderly patient? 

Symposium paricipants agreed that it takes precise attention to the individual characteristics 

of a patient in deciding on appropriate drug use. It is diffcult to establish simple age-based 

rules or algorithms that will be useful in all cases. The types of guJdelines identified by Dr. 

Gurwitz, however, can be of great value. The regulatory or policy implications are that there 

must be a cooperative effort among those who are involved in science, regulation, and policy 
, 

formulation in the creation of such guidelines. Determining appropriate drg use also requires 

that particular attention be given to patient and family satisfaction with the medication as well 

as its clinical effectiveness. 

There are few firm, fast rules in gerianic pharacology, but following the very simple 

principle which says start low - go slow" may be the best rule a physician can use in 

prescribing medications for older patients and even that is not a very rigorous principle. 

There is interest at the regulatory level in learing more about the effects of drgs on the 

elderly. Specifically, the National Institute on Aging and the FDA have expressed the concern 

that so few data are available on drug testing in elderly populations. 

With increased consumer involvement in our society and our ability to communicate much 

more thoroughly, there is an important opportunity to see to it that users of medications are 

playing as active a role as possible in interacting with health care professionals. For example 

there is at least one drug company that has started to produce ",ell designed, easy to read large print statements of potential drug reactions, and they are providing them with 

prescriptions. That is technically called for in FDA regulations, that a user has a right to ask 

for information about adverse drg reactions, but, in fact, it is nOt actively provided in most 

instances. Likewise, the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) maintains an active 

program of geriatrically-oriented patient education leaflets for members who use their 

pharacy service. Increased interaction between the users of medications and professionals 

involved in the prescribing and dispensing of drgs can make up for some of this deficit in 

compliance. 

While the FDA approves a drg for one indication, physicians are then free to use it for other 

indications. The FDA does not approve it for one age group and then prohibit or prevent a 

physician from using a drg tested in one age group on an age group which has not been 

tested. The solution wil go wanting until the responsibility is placed on all pars of the drug development, approval , and use process. Efficacy and toxicity in the elderly are often 

determined primarly by whether clinicians and patients are using drgs intellgently. 

Medication Prescribing And Utiization In The Nursing Home: Literature Review 

The nursing home setting is an area of particular concern for drg utilization review in the 

elderly. A number of studies have suggested approaches designed to reduce inappropriate 

prescribing and drg utilization in this environment. Therefore, a review of this literature was 

prepared for this symposium by Jerry Avorn, M. , Jerry Gurwitz, M. , and Stephen B. 

Soumerai , Sc. , of Harard Medical School. In contrast to the wide range of approaches 

which have been evaluated and implemented in the hospital setting, interventions in the 

nursing home have centered around consultant pharacist activities. Although these activities 

are now Federally mandated in all nursing homes, their review found that much of the 

evaluation of such programs has been methodologically inadequat , and there is little evidence 

from adequately controlled studies to document their impact or cost-effectiveness. No data 
exist on the quality of implementation of such consultant pharacist programs on a large 

scale, to address the important question of whether nominal "paper compliance" producing a 

minimum number of written recommendations per month is more common than actual impact 

on quality of care. By contrast, face-to-face educational interventions directed at physicians 

have been shown to be effective in improving prescribing for several medications. 

Polypharacy is the rule rather than the exception in the nursing home. A 1976 study by the 

Office of Long Term Care based on a sample of 3,458 nursing home patients reported an 

average 6. l drgs per patient, with some patients receiving over 20 different medications. 

There is compellng evidence to suggest that medications are frequently used inappropriately 

in many nursing homes. A 1980 study by Ray et al. reported that as nursing home practice size 

increased, doctors were found to prescribe more antipsychotic medication per patient. 

Antibiotics' are another class of medication whose utilization in the long-term care setting has 

been evaluated. A possible consequence of the excessive use of antibiotics is the development 

of increasingly virulent bacterial strains, forcing reliance on potentially more toxic and 

expensive antibiotic regimens. Additionally, the underuse of potentially belleficial medications 

represents another kind of problem in nursing home drg use. 

The general lack of organized medical staff in nursing homes further impairs the ability to 

institute educational programs or to enforce standards of drg usage in this setting. Since 

approximately 50 percent of all medication orders for nursing home patients are written by the 

physician with directions for PRN (take as needed) administration, the nursing staff, by 

default, take responsibility for a substantial proportion of prescribing decisions. In addition 

the bulk of direct care for nursing home patients is provided by nurses ' aides , who often have 

little experience or formal trainIng, and who experience high turnover rates. The expectations 

and demands of patients and their families must also be considered. The pressures exerted by 

patients and family members both for and against the prescribing of many medications can be 

enormous. In addition , a factor of paricular importance is the frequent inadequacy of staff 

making it more likely that "chemical restraints" wil be applied rather than interpersonal 

non-pharacologic solutions. 

Approaches to Improving Drug Prescribing and Utilzation in the Nursing Home 

Controlled Trials 

Studies employing these research designs provide the opponunity to control for non-program influences in the evaluation of a paricular nursing home intervention. The comparability of 

the control impacts on the ability to generalize from the results of such studies. 

Time-Series Studies 

The essence of the time-series design is a frequently repeated periodic measurement in a 

group or individual, with introduction of an intervention into this time series of measurements. 
One-Group Pre-test/Post-test Design 

Conclusions based on the results of such studies are open to question due to the lack of a 

control group, the limited number of observations, and the associated difficulties in 

controllng for confounding factors extraneous to the intervention being studied. 

While drugs are often indispensable in the medical care of elderly nursing home patients, the 

inappropriate use in this setting is of great concern. Medications can become a substitute for 

careful diagnostic maneuvers and/or effective non-pharacologic therapies, increasing the 

risk of serious adverse drg reactions in this already vulnerable population. In an era of cost 

containment and rising drg costs, the overuse of medications can also divert resources from 

more important purposes. 

Findings 

Although it is generally accepted that well-designed clinical trials of pharacologic 

interventions should serve as the basis for rational medication prescribing, health care delivery 

interventions are rarely subjected to the same quality of evaluation. Of the many research 

designs employed in the review literature, only one utilized an adequate control group. 

Further, the intervention being tested should be implemented in such a way that the influence 

of extraneous factors on measured outcomes of interest is minimized. Finally, the "active 

ingredient" of the intervention must clearly be defined. For example, the term "drug utilization 

review" can mean different things, from a simple review of the physician order book to make 

cenain that regulatory policies are being enforced, to scheduled face-to-face interactions with 

medical and nursing staff employing sophisticated educational protocols. 

Several other methodological issues were identified in the literature review conducted by Dr. 

Avorn and colleagues. They are summarized below. Factors drving prescribing in the nursing 

home are more complex than either the acute care hospital or outpatient settings, where 

physicians are the predominant decisionmakers. These differences must be taken into account 

in all regulatory or educational efforts. In measuring outcomes, if reported changes in 

medication "orders" include PRN medications, which many patients never use, any 

conclusions about the impact on actual drug utilization must be questioned. Reductions in 

PRN medications are often reported to comprise a large proportion of the favorable effect of 

intervention. However, many PRN orders are never administered. Programs to improve drug 

utilization and prescribing in the nursing home must also be evaluated in economic terms, 

ideally comprising a comparative analysis of at least two alternative programs in terms of both 

their costs and consequences. The economic implications of an improvement in drg therapy 

which reduces patients ' utilization of more expensive resources (e. , acute hospitals) must 

also be considered. 

Unfortunately, very few published studies have attempted to address the issue of clinical 

outcomes resulting from changes in drug utilization in nursing home patients. Assessment of 

clinical outcomes is essential for the complete evaluation of any pr.ogram designed to improve 

medication prescribing and drug utilization. Examples of important clinical outcomes might 
include: (1) changes in the incidence of adverse drg effects (overall or specific reactions) 

following implementation of a drg utilization review program; (2) changes in the cognitive 

behavioral, and functional status of nursing home patients associated with a program to 

improve prescribing of psychoactive medications; and (3) changes in the incidence of falls 

following a program designed to limit the occurrence of hypotensive episodes associated with 

antihypertensive medications. 

Implications for Future Research and Policy 

(1)	 Little evidence currently exists with which to evaluate the effectiveness of the current 

nationally mandated program of DUR by consultant pharacists. 

(2) Facec.to-face educational interventions directed at physicians and focusing on principles 

of geriatric pharacology have been shown to be effective in improving prescribing to 

nursing home patients of selected medications. 

(3)	 The prominent role played by the nurses and aides in the utilization of many other 

medications in this setting suggests that educational interventions must involve nursing 

staff. 

(4) Any study designed to evaluate the tre impact of intervention on drug Utilization must 

provide data concerning doses of medication administered to patients rather than merely 

ordered. " 

(5)	 Greater attention must be'paid to the actual clinical and economic outcomes of any such 

interventions. 

New methods for improving drg prescribing and utilization must be developed and tested. 

For example, computer-assisted feedback of therapeutic decisions has been shown to be 

effective in improving care in the ambulatory setting; the technology is readily available to 

incorporate such a strategy into the nursing home setting. However, widespread 

implementation of any new intervention must be preceded by careful evaluation according to 

rigorous standards of health services research, particularly in this vulnerable population. 

Following presentation of the literature review, symposium paricipants addressed strategies 

that should be employed in both institutional and ambulatory settings to improve the accuracy 

of drug use in elderly patients. It was agreed that the doctor, pharacist, nurse, family 

member, and patient must be involved in the following processes: 

Taking a very careful medication history to get a feeling for what is going on in 

the complex patients, including use of over the counter (OTC) drugs. (In the 

nursing home this is somewhat more practical because OTC drugs are dispensed by 

the same people who dispense the prescription meds. That is not the case in 

outpatient care. 
, 

Brown Bag" reviews brown bag" has become a metaphor which came from 

having patients put all their medications in a brown bag to bring to the caregiver 

who would go over them and throwaway drugs that were outdated, abused, or not 

used intellgently. This process should be ongoing in the nursing home , and is 

critical to what ought to happen in drg regimen review in long-term care. 

Cautious withdrawal of all drgs with dubious indication: This advice sometimes 

causes controversy among physicians who may feel I've got a patient who has 

been on quinidine for the last 20 years. Either I don t remember why I put her on it 

or the doctor who put her on it has been dead for l5 years, but I'm reluctant to take 

her off and have an arhythmia occur." However, Dr. A vorn argued that a cautious 

withdrawal is probably safer than having patients take potentially dangerous drugs 

if no one can figure out why they need them. 

In a program supported by the Harford Foundation , Dr. Avorn and colleagues developed an 

educational intervention to reduce overuse of psychoactive drgs in the nursing home setting. 

It consisted of four in-service training sessions for nurses; four in-service sessions for aides; 

and three one-on-one visits with prescribing physicians in their offices by a pharmacist! 

educator. Preliminary indications are that such an intervention can be effective in reducing 

excessive use of sedative drgs in the nursing home. 

Staffing is one of the major problems confronted in operating an educational intervention 

program. What is needed is a nucleus that has the clinical expertise to define the areas that wil 

be the subject of the educatiomil intervention, and knows enough about the use of computers 

and evaluation techniques to identify the providers to be educated, as well as to evaluate the 

effects of the program. The work done by such a skiled and highly motivated group must then 

be translated into the everyday world of actual health care delivery systems. 

Staffing within the nursing home is of critical importance. Unless more money is put into 

improving staffing, problems wil be encountered in changing the prescribing of psychoactive 

drugs. It is not necessarly an issue of the size of the staff, but rather the atmosphere in the 

facility. 

The consultant pharmacist is not fully utilized for retrospective drg utilization review by 

long-term care (nursing home) facilities. Many consultant pharacists find themselves 

charged with the responsibility of preparing a nursing home for a Medicaid inspection, but not 

truly interacting with patients or with other professionals regarding patient-specific matters. 

There is no standard of practice for the consultant pharacist; professional training is lacking 

in geriatrc pharacology; very little is taught in American schools of pharmacy or medicine 

about geriatrcs; and systematic instrction in the proper use of drgs is not getting proper 

attention. 
, 

It is possible the private sector wil get involved in drg utilization review before the Federal 

Government enters it on a large scale. The concern for DUR in the private sector is coming 

from several sources: employers who pay for drg benefits, insurance companies , and HMOs. 

Preventing Drug-Related Morbidity 

The symposium next turned to a discussion by C. Douglas Hepler, Ph. , of the University of 

Florida regarding the role of the pharacist in preventing drug-related morbidity (DRM). Dr. 

Hepler called attention to one estimate (Southwick) that places the cost of drg-related ilness 

in the U.S. at around seven bilion dollars annually. By contrast therapeutic failure" is an 

intermediate medical care outcome in which drug therapy does not secure the necessar result 

in an acceptable time period. It can result in therapeutic substitution or the addition of new 

therapy; the progress of disease; and the prolongation of symptoms and disability. Drug 

ther:1 :fY can cause the appearance of new symptoms such as adverse drug reactions and side 

effects, ct.-ug toxicity, or drug interactions with food or other drugs. 

Drug-rl-,ated morbidity may be caused by a number of factors: inappropriate prescribing, 

inappropriate delivery, inappropriate patient behavior, or inappropriate monitoring of drug 

therapy. Unresolved drug-related problems may lead to drug-related morbidity, which, if 

unresolved, may lead in turn to drug-related mortality. 

A drg-related problem is a circumstance of drug treatment that actually or potentially 

interferes with the patient s experiencing an optimum outcome of medical care. Strand el af. 

(l989) have identified eight caregories of drug-related problems. 

The patient has a medical problem that requires drug therapy (a drg indication) but no 

drug has been prescribed for that indication. 

A drg indication exists but the wrong regimen has been ordered. 

A medical problem is being treated with too little of the correct drug (subtherapeUtic 

dose ). 

A medical problem exists as the result of a patient s not receiving the drug, e. , for

pharaceutical, psychological, sociological, or economic reasons. 

The patient has a medical problem that is being treated with too much of the correct 

drug (toxicity). 

The patient has a medical problem that is the result of an adverse drug reaction or side 

effect. 

The patient has a medical problem that is the result of a drug-drug, drg-food, druglaboratory interaction. 
The patient is taking a drg for no medically valid indication. 

In order to prevent drg-related morbidity, the problem must be recognizable, the morbidity 

must be foreseeable, and the cause(s) must be controllable. Deciding what is preventable 

(recognizable, foreseeable, controllable) requires a standard of care. However, there is no 

consensus standard of care for drg therapy. In addition, there is no consensus standard for the 

drug use process. It is unsafe to assume that physicians, pharacists, and nurses somehow will 

detect, prevent, and resolve drug- related problems. Monitoring is an especially weak point in 

drug use, paricularly in ambulatory care. 

Varous studies indicate the prevalence of DRM. However, there are significant 

methodological problems with many of the DRM studies. They don t define the concept of 

preventabiiity. To further understand preventable DRM requires: a standard of care for the 

drug use process; epidemiological data regarding preventable DRM (applied standard of care); 

and consensus or, imerpretation of the epidemiological data. 

The pharacist can playa much larger role in preventing, detecting, and resolving 

drug-related problems. Pharacists are suited by education, availability (Manasse , 1988), and 

location in the drug use process. Some pharacists have already begun new functions related 

to preventing DRM, under the names of "clinical pharacy" or "therapeutic monitoring. 

Others call these functions "Prospective Drug Use Review. " The purpose of pharaceutical 

care is to achieve definite outcomes that improve a patient s quality of life by means of 

detecting, preventing, and resolving drg-related problems. Pharaceutical care should be 

integrated with the other elements of health care, but the pharmacist accepts direct responsibility for the quality o(that care. 

The literature shows that some drug-related morbidity can be prevented, and that pharacists 

can contribute significantly to achieving that goal. This wil require significant changes in the 

philosophy and organization of the practices of many pharacists. The pharmacist must 

recognize new purpose and responsibility; acquire additional competence; obtain resources 

and develop relationships; and find rewards in the new practice. 

The Food and Drug Administration assessment of the impact of adverse drug reactions is that 

there are 27,000 to 28,000 reported adverse reactions annually, with hospitalization or death 

resulting from 19 percent of the cases. However, these figures may be quite below what is 

actually occurrng. Although good data on costs are lacking, it is possible that the figure could 

reach four bilion dollars in terms of bearng the load for the treatment of the consequences of 

drug-related disease. There is no systematic reporting for treatment failure, and that could 

mean that the four bilion dollar figure is not really indicative of the problem, which could be 

much larger than anticipated. 

At present, pharacists remain outside the medical "information loop." They need to learn 

how to tie information about drg use and the drug user together and relearn the idea of 

focusing on individual patients. Pharacists should be held accountable for what they do and 

evaluated for their ability to prevent drug-related morbidity. The profession might look to the 
Federal Government and agencies such as HCFA for standards of practice or training. Dr. 

Hepler stated that the mission of HCFA, however, is financing, and only very recently has it 

become involved in quality care issues. It is possible that the "Effectiveness Initiative 

developed by the Department of Health and Human Services to focus on outcomes in quality 

care, could be an indication of greater awareness at the Federal level. 

The responsibility for training, retraining, or resocializing pharacists might fall to the 

employer in the case of the thousands of pharacists who work for chain stores. But unless 

the employer is given some incentive or penalty for training or not training, cooperation will 

be minimal. One way the Government can help is by setting up demonstration projects. An 

advantage of demonstration projects is the fact that the effect on economic and clinical 

outcomes can be evaluated. 

It might be advantageous to link the dispensing fee to counseling, especially at a time such as 

now when robots and compUters art handling much of what was once the job of the 

pharacist. A possible model might be that a dispensing fee is not paid when the function is 

turned over to a computer or machine, but when the pharmacist takes time to counsel the 

patient, whether the prescription is filled or not, a dispensing fee might be appropriate. No 

matter what is done or how it is done, the pharmacist must have individual accountability in 

the drug utilization review process, and the performance of individual pharmacists should be 

tracked. 

Intervention Opportunities In Community Pharmacy Practice 

The perspective of the community pharacist was analyzed by Calvin Knowlton , president of Amherst Pharacy, Lumbenon, New Jersey. He argued that pharacists in community pharacy practice, whether independent or chain settings, are slowly shifting their focus from 

the drug product to the patient. Although community pharmacists have always been available 

to respond to patient inquiries, until now their priority has been directed to the drug product. 

It has not been an easy task for community practitioners tb adopt a more proactive 

patient-attention style, noted Mr. Knowlton. The change in priority has been an evolving 

process, not an event. The newer pharacists seem to be nudging the profession to re-orient 

its mission. Amidst the constraints of the commercial backdrop of the majority of community 

pharacies and the highly technical nature of pharacy education , the pharacy graduates of the past decade are intent on moving the profession in a more humanistic direction. While 

prescription or non-prescription drg products are stil the mainstay and preeminent domain of the practice, the patient-centered approach apparently is more satisfying to contemporar

community pharacy practitioners. Patients taking multiple drgs from one or more 

physicians need someone to monitor and intervene to reduce the chance for drg-drg interactions and/or drug-disease state incompatibilities. Community pharmacists (if not 

constrained by "management ) are increasingly welcoming the opportunity to fulfill the role 

of outpatient drug therapy monitors. 
Approximately l70 000 pharacists are currently practicing in traditional settings. These 

settings include: 50 000 chain pharacists; 75,000 independent pharmacists; and 45 000 

hospital pharacists. The community pharacists (chain and independent) practice in 

approximately 50 000 pharacies and fil over l.6 billion outpatient prescriptions annually. A 

varying number of these prescriptions are filed by mail-order pharacies (estimated to be 

about 2 percent). 

Activities performed by community pharacists have changed to reflect more patient-oriented€

approaches. These include hypertension monitoring and screening, patient education regarding€

self-care testing equipment (such as glucose monitoring machines), and providing patient€

information or literature. Although community pharacists assert that drg distrbution€

requires over 50 percent of their time, some have stated that drg information and patient care€ activities encompass 25 percent of their time. Sixteen to l8 percent of community€ pharmacists ' time is devoted to management and/or business tasks. Many community€

pharacists practice a form of "hospital phdfmacy" within the community setting by serving 

as the pharmacy provider and/or consultant to nearby nursing home facilities. 

Perhaps the most important outcome of the evolving drg-to-patient paradigm shift of focus will be to encourage community !Jharacists to use judgmental intervention on behalf of (or 

in conjunction with) patients. This opportunity exists both before and after filling a 

prescription. Yet, this judgmental intervention is constrained by the lack of formal authority to 

alter the prescription. 

Prior to filing a prescription, c9mmunity pharmacists have an opportunity to bring the patient 

into the decisionmaking process regarding certain aspects of the drg therapy. As the health 

care infrastrcture continues to move in the direction of patient autonomy via the process of 

informed consent (and away from the paternalistic model in which "the health care provider knows all and wil decide for me ), pharacists could enable patients to select from a limited

menu of prescription drug therapy options. These include the use of generic substitution; 

pharaceutical alternatives (e. , use of inexpensive short-acting vs. costly long-acting drgs); therapeutic interchange (i. , when the pharacist contacts the physician and, on behalf of the 

patient, requests a change in the prescription drug); the provision of smaller starter doses; or 

the use of protocols, in which (for managed care settings) a pharmacist provides input 

regarding cost-comparison data for treatment of a particular disease. Step-care protocol 

developed with active physician input is an alternative , creative, prospective DUR method which considers both quality of drg care and economy of drug care. 

Community pharacists are able to help patients with prescription drug education (but formal 

pedagogical, prescription drg education is also needed, staning in the elementary schools). Nuances are plentiful and important but not always obvious; but prescription drgs can now 

be demystified, standardized, and understandable. Some policy options embodying these 

concepts are: 

require current Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committees in each nursing home to 

perform DUR (both prospective and retrospective); 
require all pharacies serving Medicaid patients (as a condition of participation) to 

perform prospective patient profie reviews; 

require all pharacies serving Medicaid patients to counsel patients on each new 

prescri;Jtion; 

policymakers and organizational decisionmakers ought to consider restoring the 

elasticity of the prescription drug market demand by retiring the fixed-dollar 

prescription deductible; and 

the Government should establish criteria to seek rebates directly from drug 

manufacturers based upon drug utilization for Medicaid patients. 

The profession of pharmacy is poised to contribute to enhance the quality and efficiency of 

medication usage in the country. Community pharmacists, panicularly, ought to be 

encouraged to apply their cognitive resources to improve the drug distribution function which 

they have responsibly discharged. While pressures from witain the profession nudge 

practitioners to adopt a stronger patient-centered standard, external mandates from the public 

sector decisionmakers would be a favorable catalyst for change. 

In the discussion following the presentation of Mr. Knowlton s paper, symposium paricipants 

indicated that until the 1950's, pharacists were compounding and recommending drugs for 

patients but with the passage of the Durham-Humphrey legislation in 1952, pharacists were 

constrained from prescribing or' getting involved with treatment decisions regarding the drug products on their shelf. That constraint now has put them in a situation in the community 

pharacy of possible termnal displacement as they find themselves just "counting, pouring, 

licking, and sticking. 

An interim step occurred in the early 70' s when capitation money came from the Government 

into the colleges of pharacy. There was money and no shortage of students. Money was 

supplied to local hospitals and pharmacy staff people and faculty people were placed in local 

hospitals as teachers, in par giving birth to the idea of hospital clinical pharmacy. During that 

time a new degree was created for those people entering pharmacy. Also, as a result of 

Medicare, the consultant pharacist s role evolved in the nursing home setting. Through all of 

this, however, there has not been any focus on community pharmacy. More and more 

pharmacists are going to work for chains - however, chain pharmacies fil less that 

percent of the prescriptions that are filed in this countr. Most prescriptions are stil filled in 

independent pharacies. 

Statistics also show that 70 percent of practicing pharacists are happy with their jobs 

although happiness is not the most important indicator of their performance. There should be 

. more focus on the question "Are pharacists satisfied with providing suboptimal service 

when they know they are capable of doing much more?" There are some internal mandates for 

change in pharacies. A recent conference on "Pharmacy in the Twenty-first Century 
identified three key areas of need: the pharacy in the community has to demonstrate its 

value; higher expectations are needed in the practice of pharacy; and there should be 

standards of care of pharacy practice. In addition to these needs, nursing homes should be 

urged to gear up their therapeutics committees and include mandatory prospective and 

retrospective drug utilization review on their agenda with pharacist input on those 

committees. 

Computerized Databases For Educational Drug Utilzation Review 

In the final presentation, Wayne A. Ray, Ph. , of Vanderbilt University, discussed the use of 

computerized databases for educational drug utilization review. Educational drg utilization 

review, which works by educating prescribers and other caregivers, can be an important 

component of the drug utilization review program. The advantages of this method are that it is 

minimally intrusive upon the physician-patient relationship; it improves the physician 

knowledge base and may thus l1ave benefits that accrue to persons other than those in the 

target population or receiving the target drug; and it has good provider acceptance. Much of 

the research in the field of educational drg utilization review has employed computerized 

databases. Computerized medical care databases frequently originate from systems for 

providing medical care to a defined population in which pruviders are reimbursed by a single 

third pary. For administrative reasons, these systems often maintain files that identify the 

persons belonging to the system and contain brief summaries of the medical care the members 

receive. These files include the enrollment fie, the pharmacy fie, the provider fie, and 

several other fies. 

Enrollment fie. The enrollment file enumerates persons who are members of the defined 

population. 

Pharmacy fie. The most crucial file for the purposes of drg utilization review is the 

pharmacy file. This fie includes records of prescriptions filled at the pharmacy in outpatient 

practice. 

Provider fie. The provider fie enumerates the physicians who provide care for the members 

of the defined population. 

The first step in drug utilization review is specification of the therapeutic area of interest. This 

requires selection of the drg or group of drgs for which prescribing is to be improved. The 

next step in a program of educational drg utilization review is the identification of those 

physicians or other caregivers who are to receive the educational program. To be cost 

effective, drg utilization review should focus on those providers who frequently use the 

target drgs. Given the provider group to receive the educational program, the next step is the 

intervention, or presentation of the educational materials to the providers. The only method 

. that has been proven to be effective is a personal visit. Evaluation is an essential component of 

educational drg utilization review. It is needed to assess the effica,cy of the educational 
program and to define subgroups of nonrespondent providers for whom different methods 

may be required. 

The detailed information on the use of prescription medications in a defined population is the 

primar strength of computerized databases for educational drug utilization review. This 

permts one to identify high volume prescribers of target drgs, who can then be selected to receive the educational intervention. The availability of this database then permts rapid and economical evaluation of intervention efficacy. 

The key limitation of computerized databases is the lack of clinical detail that would permit 

more precise definition of substandard prescribing. For example, some diuretics may induce hypokalemia. With appropriate monitoring of serum potassium, this adverse effect can be prevented by provision of supplemental pOtassium. However, all patients receiving diuretics certainly do not need potassium supplements. With most computerized databases, there is no 

way to identify patients who should have received potassium supplement 

there is no direct way to identify physicians whose prescribing in this area is substandard. bUt did not, and thus

Educational drug utilization review creates a better environment for both the patient ard the 

physician. The changes that are created in the physician s knowledge base wil have wider effects than the specific program in which he or she is involved. For those reasons 

educational drg utilization review should be a very large part of drg utilization review programming. It has been proven to work in a research setting. The challenge now is to find 

out how to implement it in the real world the world of Medicaid programs run by people who have quite a few pressures on what they do in the realm of health maintenance 

organizations. 

The DUR provisions of the Catastrophic Care statute placed too much emphasis on a very 

limited display of a few prescriptions in a pharmacist s office and the idea that from that one would be able to markedly improve prescribing. The emphasis could have been shifted more 

to educational drug utilization review. There may be a role for compUterizedbased screening, but it should not be the centerpiece of a DUR program. In screening for drug interactions 

there are a lot of programs oUt there that generate many false positives. 

In the proposed implementation stage of the Catastrophic Care drug benefit, HCFA took a 

very mechanized approach. The intent of the law might have been that DUR should occur at 

the pharacist level, as well as other points in the process. The use of computerized screens to 

identify "prescribing problems" was not written into the Catastrophic Care Act; rather HCFA' , it was s proposed method of complying with its view of Congressional intent. However 

pharacists in , most the countr have compUterized profiing systems in place now that are far more sophisticated than the system HCFA proposed. 

Following Dr. Ray s presentation, participants nOted that while the educational approach is good, for the individual patient at the time the patient is beginning therapy, the educational 

approach may be too late. The combination of the 

and collaborating with the physician could offer something immediate for the patient, while pharacist providing pharaceutical care
the educational approach is designed to make longer-term changes in physicians ' prescribing 

behavior. Physician education and pharaceutical care don t compete, but there has been 

tension in this debate throughout the last year over the relative value of each approach. 

The Catastrophic Care Act clearly called for prospective review and also called for an 

educational program. What is needed is a comprehensive and systematic review of therapy 

not just what can be seen from a profie. The patient needs to be consulted and the 

professional must get integrated into the medical database in order to prevent drug-related 

morbidity. Although the law did attempt to speak to educational programs, it was in the 

implementation phase that problems arose. 

There is a major deficit in medical education in therapeutics, and this deficit is amplified in 

the area of geriatrics. What can be done in the wake of this deficit is to catch the errors and 

clean up after them every time they occur, or since the same people are making the errors over 

and over it would be better in the long TUn to tr to educate them to do it right. 

Policy And Practice Recommendations For Drug Utilization Review 

On day two, the symposium participants re-convened for a panel discussion with active 

involvement of all attendees. The panel was given a twofold task by Dr. Avorn, who chaired 

the discussion: 

Par one Given that in the coming decade there wil be more governmental 

payment for medica ions used by the elderly; given that there already is such 

payment at the non-Federal level through various State programs; given that even 

if there weren t such payment, extensive medication use by the elderly would stil 

present major questions of health care delivery and medical care expenditures; as 

we gear up for the next set of bills and programs and consider those already in 

place, what would be the model DUR system those around the table would like to 

see? 

Part two - What research needs must be addressed in order for us to know more 

about DUR and how it ought to be performed, and how do we want to guide those 

efforts in the next several years? 

There are many aspects of how DUR systems work about which we do not know. The list of 

research issues is extensive: 

We know that educ itional drg utilization review programs work in small-scale 

settings run by academically oriented groups. Wil they work as well when they are 

run on a larger scale? 
We need to study educational drg utilization review in more diffcult settings and 

for more difficult clinical problems, such as the nursing home and the use of 

psychotropic drugs. 

Does the widely promoted computerized feedback DUR model actually work? 

What is the role of the pharacist in the outpatient setting? 

Paricipants noted that peer review organizations (PROs) could prove to be one mechanism for 

addressing drg utilization review. However, this would be appropriate only if the 

Government is wiling to allocate funds and resources to the task. PROs could argue that 

although this is very important, there are other pars of the mandate that they cannot fully 

complete at this point because they do not have enough resources. 

GAO has done a series of studies looking at the activity of the PROs with respect to drug 

utilization review. Two questions emerged: (l) Do PROs have the expertise, manpower, and 

access to data that would permit them to do appropriate drg utilization reviews? (2) What is 

the advantage? This could come to a head in some years ahead as the PROs are required to 

move into outpatient care. Suddenly, PROs could find themselves heavily involved with the 

appropriateness of prescribing practices. 

A loose nOtion of managed care is becoming prominent in health care. It is implemented in 

very different ways in different systems. What is needed is a standard, whether it is formulated 

by the Government or a public-minded private non-profit. We need a model of drug utilization 

review that takes into account all the operational aspects of making a DUR system work. The 

marketplace does not necessarly come up with the right sort of utilization management tools. 

If we are to have strategies for the dissemination of this kind of innovation, they have to be 

multi-pronged. They have to include some Government demonstrations and conferences with 

public and private providers who are doing DUR in an intelligent and scientific way.€

The whole intent ofDUR should not be seen merely as "error pick-ups," but as an educational 

activity. However, in a managed care environment, where there are finite resources, the 

bottom line is always a factor. In the for-profit sector money is ultimately the priority, and 

there is concern that in some managed care organizations, money wil be the entire focus. 

There is an additional problem to consider when examining the question of managed care: the 

group that probably deserves the greatest priority is the debilitated elderly, who are receiving 

the most medication and are probably the most at risk for adverse drg effects. The debilitated 

elderly are not moving into these managed care situations in large numbers. 

The Feedback DUR Model, which is based on retrospective reviews of pharaceutical 

interventions, was not represented at the symposium. It has been dismissed as not being 

rigorous, although it is possibly the most common kind of DUR. The Feedback DUR Model is 

not represented in the body of well done , well controlled studies. here appears to be no study 
that meets the standards of scientific research which shows that it works. However, since it 

seems to be such a popular model, it should be tested more extensively. 

Dr. Avorn presented three models to ilustrate the limitations and strengths of the way 

academia operates, the way the private sector does things, and the Government approach. 

Because each has problems, consideration should be given to taing the best parts of each and 

bringing them together in future studies of DUR: 

Academic approach There is enormous attention to methods. This prolongs the 

time necessary to perform and evaluate a project, and it is done on a small scale 

because that is the only way one can do something that carefully. Often the 

intervention is performed without attention to its cost-effectiveness. Detailed 

evaluations eventually emerge. 

Government approach For political reasons it is very difficult to do a 

randomized controlled trial: one cannot say that some States or that somt. older 

people are going to get DUR and some are not. Programs are implemented on a 

massive scale , but program conceptualization, design , and evaluation are often the 

imperfect products of consensus and political necessity. 

Prvate sector approach Interventions are brought to market rapidly, but the 

evaluation component is often neglected, and in the case of some of the examples 

presented, more than neglected. In some instances, it may even be scrupulously 

avoided for reasons hat have to do with commercial interests. Efficiency and 

cost-effectiveness are well tracked, but " bottom line" considerations may 

overwhelm those of quality if the two conflict. 

A question which needs to be examined is: "Is there a way that we could take the carefulness 

of the academic approach and couple it with the operational abilities of the Government 

approach and the zeal of the private sector approach to produce a well-evaluated public or 

private product - a product that lends itself to a definition of what it actually does and what 

its outcome is?" There is a real opportunity here to marr some of the academic and the 

operational in DUR with the data open to everybody. There now exists a window of time and 

opportunity. Knowing that DUR wil come up again in a few years, decisions should be made 

on how best to take advantage of this window. 

Much can also be done in terms of paricipation by pharacists. There ar some things that 

the community pharacist could do as an individual, drawing on an extensive body of 

knowledge in pharmacy. Pharacy students generally start out wanting to perfornl 

patient-related services. They are taught that in school but when they enter the real world, they 

frequently are shocked by policies and procedures of places where they go to work, and they 

. cannot implement much of what they have learned. One of the ways to empower phamlacists 

is for them to have their own pharmacy practices, which are likelYJo be patient-oriented. 
An avenue available through Medicaid for DUR is claims data. They have been used for€

research in the past. Yet claims data are often available with a very long lead-time, which€

could result in retrospective review two or three years later. There are real research€

possibilities with data which can be used as a key into the system once it is determined what€

those claims data mean and how they can best be used.€

It wil be unfortunate if Government doesn t tae some leadership on DUR issues, because 

without some initiative coming from the center, other forces wil make DUR less significant. 

One has to wonder why the knowledge base which has been developed in hospitals with 

Pharacy and Therapeutics Committees cannot be brought into some type of educational 

intervention committee on an outpatient basis, where physicians and pharacists get together 

for ongoing DUR discussions. 

It is possible to consider other laboratories to tr out drug utilization review and education.€

The Public Health Service supports some 600 community and migrant health centers around€

the countr. One of the advantages of doing research in the system is having a complete and€

long-term profile of drug use. Resources are built into the system for continuing education.€

Another is the Indian Health Service, which provides a billon dollars a year in health care€

coverage. They are atypical because of the population served, but again it is essentially a€

closed provider system.


We are in a primitive state concerning prospective DUR and we are not even sure what the 

name of it should be. That is because we are not yet in total agreement about what the process 

really is. One of the things that has been very helpful is all the new thoughts that were 

introduced in this symposium on exactly what the process is and what the goal is the goal 

is taking better care of elderly people and not wasting anybody s money in the process. There 

are a lot of ways that can be done. Some of them may involve computers, some of them may 

not. Some of them may involve steps that happen before the dispensing and before the 

prescribing, but some of them don 

Despite the nearly-implemented program that would have accompanied Catastrophic 

Coverage, we should not be so sure of ourselves that we know all there is to know about€

DUR. We wil need to spend the next several years gearing up in as many different ways as€

possible. Dr. Avorn concluded the discussion by nOting that whether or not one believes in the 

marketplace of commerce in shaping health care delivery, the marketplace of ideas works, 

even if it works slowly. If a given intervention or program isn t working, sooner or later€

people are going to walk away from it. We need to tr as many options as we can and then€

perhaps, by mid-decade, we wil have objective data on what works and what does not in€

DUR on which to base large-scale programs.€
RESEARCH QUESTIONS IDENTIFIED


IN THE SYMPOSIUM ON DRUG UTILIZATION REVIEW


Prepared by Jerry A vorn, M. 

The fact that the symposium brought together policymakers, regulators, geriatrcians, 

pharacists, health services researchers, and a number of other individuals from many sectors 

of the health care delivery system made it possible to approach the topic of drg utilization review for the elderly in a multidisciplinary way, and led to a number of provocative 

discussions that might otherwise never have taken place. A number of themes emerged as 

areas in need of further research for health policy planning and optimal patient care. These are 

summarzed briefly below: 

Several approaches exist to drug utilization review, but nOt all of them have been

subjected to rigorous and methodologically acceptable evaluation. Systematic studies 

should be conducted of each of the modalities listed below considering outcomes that 

include both economic measures (cost of drgs as well as total cost of medical care) and clinical outcomes (quality of prescribing, frequency of adverse effects, and patient 

satisfaction). Because of the importance of the issue at hand, these must be conducted in a randomized controlled format if the results are to be of maximum utility. 

a. consultant pharmacist services, as currently mandated for long-term care facilities; 

b. 	 retrospective compute based screening of prescriptions with feedback of the printouts thus generated to physicians; 

c. 	 proactive face-to-face education of physicians concerning proper medication use 

academic detailing 

d. concurrent computer screening of prescriptions at the pharmacy prior to dispensing. 

Of these, only (c) has been subjected to careful study in the recommended manner. 

Is it feasible for the community-based pharacist to engage in more effective drug utilzation review, and if so how can this be facilitated? Much controversy exists 

concerning the actual and potential utility of having typical community-based 

pharacists engage in evaluations of drg regimens, taking steps to improve them when 

necessar. In such studies , particular attention should be devoted to the issue of 

economic incentives , including both the need to fill large numbers of prescriptions in 

many commercial settings, as well as the question of what services are or should be 

provided in exchange for the currntly automatic dispensing fee. 
With the inevitable automation of prescription data and other health care claims data 

what is the optimal approach to capturing and linking information in order to facilitate 

drug utilization review, parcularly for the elderly? Specifically, 

a. What data elements should be collected? 

b. 	 What linkages between prescription data and clinical data are appropriate and 

feasible? 

c. To whom should such information be made available? 

d. 	 What screening procedures should be used to identif cases in need of drug 

utilzation review, and to what use should such information be put once it has been 

processed? 

The current U.S. health care system offers a large number of settings in which 

innovative drg utilization review strategies could be pilot tested in a careful manner 

before they are mandated nationally. These include the varous State Medicaid 

programs, State pharacy assistance for the elderly programs, health maintenance 

organizations, private insurers, professional review organizations, the Veterans 

Adminstration, the Deparment of Defense, health care systems, and numerous smaller 

HHS-supported health care delivery systems, among others. How can experimentation 

be encouraged in these settings to inform future policy decisions? 

Considerable gaps stil exist in our knowledge of the scientific basis for proper drg use 

in the elderly. While research continues in the areas of health care delivery outlined 

above, parallel research must be conducted, ideally through the National Institute on 

Aging, on the pharacological basis of the recommendations that are to be 

implemented in any drug utilization review system. This would include more research 

on the pharacokinetics and pharacodynamics of commonly used medication in the 

aged, appropriate dosing adjusted for normal aging and for frail geriatrc patients, and 

(through collaboration with the Food and Drug Administrtion) systematic post-market 

surveilance to help identify the magnitude of and risk factors for adverse effects of 

concern in an older population.€