Pharmacy Referral Boosts Appropriate Statin Prescribing

The odds of patients being prescribed appropriate statin doses increased sixfold with automated referrals to pharmacy services compared with traditional prescribing, according to a study presented at the recent American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

“The findings suggest that automated referrals to centralized pharmacy services for lipid management are a game-changing strategy, drastically improving the odds of prescribing appropriate dose statins,” said Alexander C. Fanaroff, MD, MHS, an assistant professor of cardiovascular medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

The cluster randomized trial included 1950 patients from 10 primary care practices affiliated with the Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health System, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Researchers investigated the effects of automated referrals of patients not already prescribed statins to a centralized pharmacy service. Pharmacists contacted appropriate patients and discussed their personalized risks and the benefits of statin initiation. When appropriate, pharmacists initiated statin therapy. The automatic referral arm spanned 975 patients.

According to the study, 86.4% of eligible patients were not prescribed statins at baseline. The remainder of patients were taking inappropriately low doses.

Statin prescription rates in practices randomized to automatic pharmacy referral increased significantly, the study showed. Some 31.6% of participants in automatic pharmacy referral practices were prescribed a statin compared with 15.2% of participants in usual care practices.

Moreover, 24.8% of patients at automatic pharmacy referral practices were prescribed a statin at the guideline-recommended dose, whereas just 7.7% of patients at usual care practices received guideline-recommended doses.

Reference

Appropriate statin prescriptions increase sixfold with automated referrals. News release. University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine; November 13, 2023. Accessed January 4, 2024. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1007675