Pharmacoeconomics and Safe Medication Use

Formulary management to determine whether newly marketed or approved medications should be

included/excluded with/without use criteria that may affect prescribing patterns

Creation of therapeutic interchanges for various drug classes or individual agents (ie, biosimilars)

with known equivalence

use of medications in the context of safety and efficacy

One situation in which this may be forced is a drug shortage that affects the availability of standard

of care at your institution. This forced evaluation may identify more cost-effective practices based

on evidence-based medicine.

Implementation of drug use policy to promote the most efficient use of health care products and services

Perform program evaluations to determine the value of an existing medical or pharmacy service or

the potential worth of starting a new service, in addition to guiding the establishment of key business

objectives or metrics of growth, adoption, or process control

Population health analytics (e.g., use of pharmacoeconomic analyses to determine evidence-based

medicine treatment decisions within a health system)

Determine individual patient treatment decisions

Publication of pharmacoeconomic evaluations with pharmacist involvement

Patient Case

A 30-year-old patient is admitted to the surgical ICU after a motor vehicle accident. Which would best

exemplify an indirect cost from their perspective?

In the United States, 770,000 injuries or deaths are caused by ADRs annually; the cost burden of ADEs

is greater than $5.6 million per hospital.

ADEs are estimated to occur in up to 7% of hospital admissions, with up to 14% of hospital

admissions attributable to ADEs.

A severe ADE increases the hospital length of stay by 8–12 days at a cost of $16,000–$24,000 per

patient.

The cost burden of preventable ADEs in the United States is $4.1 million per hospital annually.

Medical malpractice lawsuits are often related to, or occur because of, ADEs.

administered a high-risk medication and the potential for altered response to medications because of

altered pharmacokinetics and organ failure.