Clinical trial NCT06902779: Evaluation of the Impact of a Collaboration Between Hospital and Community Pharmacists at Hospital Discharge
Official title: Enhanced Collaboration Between Hospital and Community Pharmacists to Improve the Hospital Discharge Process
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: NOT_YET_RECRUITING
Phase: NA
Conditions: Polypharmacy
Keywords: transition of care
pharmacists
hospital discharge
collaboration
Lead sponsor: Pharmacie des Hopitaux de l'Est Lemanique
Sponsor class: OTHER
First posted: 2025-03-30
Enrollment: 150
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 18
Standard ages: ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: no
Allocation: RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: PARALLEL
Primary purpose: SUPPORTIVE_CARE

Brief summary: The aim of this study is to evaluate the impact of an enhanced collaboration between a hospital pharmacist and a community pharmacist during hospital discharge. For patients taking multiple medications, hospitalization often involves numerous changes to their treatment regimen. For community pharmacies, discharge prescriptions are often complex, and they sometimes lack the information that pharmacists need to deliver the treatment as safely as possible. As a result, there is a risk of medication errors, and a risk for patients. We aim to evaluate the benefits of this collaboration for adult patients admitted to the internal medicine ward of a regional hospital who are taking seven or more drugs and are being discharged to home.

The main question it aims to answer is : Does the enhanced collaboration reduce the number of drug-related problems encountered by community pharmacists with discharge prescriptions ? Researchers will compare patients when a hospital pharmacist is involved during the discharge process and when he or she is not involved, which corresponds to normal care.

The hospital pharmacist will not perform the intervention directly on the patient, but only with the community pharmacy. Once they agree to participate in the study, patients will only have to go to their usual community pharmacy after discharge and accept that the hospital transmits medical information to their usual pharmacy.


Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* Patients admitted to the internal medicine ward for more than 48 hours
* Patients prescribed seven or more drugs at the time of screening
* Patients discharged to home
* Patients able to give informed consent as documented by signature

Exclusion Criteria:

* Patient discharged to another hospital, nursing home or rehabilitation clinic
* Refusal of the community pharmacy to participate
* Inability to sign consent and follow the procedures of the study, due to language problems, psychological disorders, dementia, alterations of consciousness and lack of judgement

Primary outcomes:
measure: Number of drug-related problems on the hospital discharge prescription
timeFrame: 7 days after hospital discharge
Secondary outcomes:
measure: Patient's satisfaction
timeFrame: 7 days after hospital discharge
measure: Community pharmacists' satisfaction
timeFrame: Through study completion, approximately 6 months
measure: 30 day readmission rate
timeFrame: 30 days after hospital discharge
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Rennaz
country: Switzerland
facility: Hôpital Riviera-Chablais, Vaud-Valais
state: Vaud
Study officials:
affiliation: Pharmacie des Hôpitaux de l'Est Lémanique
name: Anne-Laure Blanc, PharmD, PhD
role: STUDY_DIRECTOR
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