 |
|
Dr. Barb Farrell, Bruyère Research Institute in Ottawa, is one of three grant recipients in 2016. |
As Canada's only national pharmacy charity, since 1945 CFP has transformed more than $2 million in individual and corporate donations into awards, bursaries and scholarships for pharmacy innovators and leaders across the country. Grants from the Innovation Fund are a core component of CFP's commitment to support pharmacy for a healthier Canada.
To be considered for an Innovation Grant, you must be a pharmacist engaged in research or an innovative model of pharmacy practice that seeks to advance the profession in ways that can demonstrably improve the health of patients. CFP can award up to $100,000 in total funding for grants this year.
Here's how the application process works:
Stage 1 - Letter of Intent
Please complete and submit the Letter of Intent form by May 16, 2017. This is an online process; click here to begin.
Stage 2 - Selection of Finalists
CFP's Board reviews the Letters of Intent and selects finalists in June. Finalists are asked to send a full application by late July or early August (deadline to be finalized).
Stage 3 - Selection of Grant Recipients
CFP's Grants Review Committee reviews the finalists' applications and makes its recommendations for funding in October. The Board selects and notifies the winners.
For more information, contact CFP Executive Director Dayle Acorn at dacorn@cfpnet.ca or 905.997.3238.
Related links:
2016 news article: Introducing the 2016 Innovation Fund winners
2015 news article: 2015 Innovation Fund winners
Annual Innovation Gala to honour Grant recipients
Dr. Barbara Farrell of the Bruyère Research Institute in Ottawa has been awarded $50,000 to support her research project on “Mobilizing Community Pharmacists as Catalysts for Deprescribing.” Based at the Institute, Farrell and her team will work with community pharmacy practices and a national advisory group (with provider and private payer representation) over a one-year period to develop acceptable workflow strategies for deprescribing guideline use.
Research associates will work with each pharmacy to quantify opportunities for deprescribing, describe activities and processes associated with guideline use—including how long such activities take—and highlight enablers and barriers that pharmacists encounter. This project is expected to lay the foundation for a larger demonstration project examining reach, adoption and implementation of deprescribing strategies, and ultimately a randomized controlled trial of deprescribing interventions that explores patient and health system outcomes, including related cost savings.
Dr. Barbara Farrell of the Bruyère Research Institute in Ottawa has been awarded $50,000 to support her research project on “Mobilizing Community Pharmacists as Catalysts for Deprescribing.” Based at the Institute, Farrell and her team will work with community pharmacy practices and a national advisory group (with provider and private payer representation) over a one-year period to develop acceptable workflow strategies for deprescribing guideline use.
Research associates will work with each pharmacy to quantify opportunities for deprescribing, describe activities and processes associated with guideline use—including how long such activities take—and highlight enablers and barriers that pharmacists encounter. This project is expected to lay the foundation for a larger demonstration project examining reach, adoption and implementation of deprescribing strategies, and ultimately a randomized controlled trial of deprescribing interventions that explores patient and health system outcomes, including related cost savings.
.jpg "Dr. Line Guenette")
Dr. Line Guénette of the Faculty of Pharmacy at Laval University and her team have received $26,800 to develop evidence-based electronic tools for community pharmacists to detect and improve medication non-adherence. Drawing on their previous research in medication adherence measures, the team aims to develop five electronic tools to target four common chronic disease areas (type 2 diabetes, hypertension, asthma and depression).
“We are committed to building tools that have acceptability, usability, utility, implementation and ways to improve e-tools for supporting pharmacy practice,” says Guénette, noting that the initial focus will be on diabetes and depression. “By developing and providing new tools to better identify patients having adherence problems, we will engage and support pharmacists with their crucial role regarding …medication efficacy/safety."
Dr. Barbara Farrell of the Bruyère Research Institute in Ottawa has been awarded $50,000 to support her research project on “Mobilizing Community Pharmacists as Catalysts for Deprescribing.” Based at the Institute, Farrell and her team will work with community pharmacy practices and a national advisory group (with provider and private payer representation) over a one-year period to develop acceptable workflow strategies for deprescribing guideline use.
Research associates will work with each pharmacy to quantify opportunities for deprescribing, describe activities and processes associated with guideline use—including how long such activities take—and highlight enablers and barriers that pharmacists encounter. This project is expected to lay the foundation for a larger demonstration project examining reach, adoption and implementation of deprescribing strategies, and ultimately a randomized controlled trial of deprescribing interventions that explores patient and health system outcomes, including related cost savings.
Dr. Line Guénette of the Faculty of Pharmacy at Laval University and her team have received $26,800 to develop evidence-based electronic tools for community pharmacists to detect and improve medication non-adherence. Drawing on their previous research in medication adherence measures, the team aims to develop five electronic tools to target four common chronic disease areas (type 2 diabetes, hypertension, asthma and depression).
“We are committed to building tools that have acceptability, usability, utility, implementation and ways to improve e-tools for supporting pharmacy practice,” says Guénette, noting that the initial focus will be on diabetes and depression. “By developing and providing new tools to better identify patients having adherence problems, we will engage and support pharmacists with their crucial role regarding …medication efficacy/safety."
University of Toronto’s Sara Guilcher and her team were also honoured with a 2016 Innovation Fund grant worth $38,000 to establish and evaluate the feasibility of an Acute care to Community Pharmacy Communication Link (ACC-Link) to improve medication management across transitions of care.
Building on existing best evidence around successful medication management interventions, the ACC-Link provides communication between hospital and community pharmacists to actively equip the latter with information needed to guide patients and their families at the point of hospital discharge. By evaluating the feasibility of the intervention and understanding the factors that may influence implementation, the researchers are expecting the program can be scaled to fit other clinical settings.
“Ultimately, ACC-Link has the potential to improve patients’ medication experiences, safety, overall health, and quality of life for themselves and their caregivers while reducing health-system costs and demand,” noted the research team in their submission.
Dr. Barbara Farrell of the Bruyère Research Institute in Ottawa has been awarded $50,000 to support her research project on “Mobilizing Community Pharmacists as Catalysts for Deprescribing.” Based at the Institute, Farrell and her team will work with community pharmacy practices and a national advisory group (with provider and private payer representation) over a one-year period to develop acceptable workflow strategies for deprescribing guideline use.
Research associates will work with each pharmacy to quantify opportunities for deprescribing, describe activities and processes associated with guideline use—including how long such activities take—and highlight enablers and barriers that pharmacists encounter. This project is expected to lay the foundation for a larger demonstration project examining reach, adoption and implementation of deprescribing strategies, and ultimately a randomized controlled trial of deprescribing interventions that explores patient and health system outcomes, including related cost savings.
Dr. Line Guénette of the Faculty of Pharmacy at Laval University and her team have received $26,800 to develop evidence-based electronic tools for community pharmacists to detect and improve medication non-adherence. Drawing on their previous research in medication adherence measures, the team aims to develop five electronic tools to target four common chronic disease areas (type 2 diabetes, hypertension, asthma and depression).
“We are committed to building tools that have acceptability, usability, utility, implementation and ways to improve e-tools for supporting pharmacy practice,” says Guénette, noting that the initial focus will be on diabetes and depression. “By developing and providing new tools to better identify patients having adherence problems, we will engage and support pharmacists with their crucial role regarding …medication efficacy/safety."
University of Toronto’s Sara Guilcher and her team were also honoured with a 2016 Innovation Fund grant worth $38,000 to establish and evaluate the feasibility of an Acute care to Community Pharmacy Communication Link (ACC-Link) to improve medication management across transitions of care.
Building on existing best evidence around successful medication management interventions, the ACC-Link provides communication between hospital and community pharmacists to actively equip the latter with information needed to guide patients and their families at the point of hospital discharge. By evaluating the feasibility of the intervention and understanding the factors that may influence implementation, the researchers are expecting the program can be scaled to fit other clinical settings.
“Ultimately, ACC-Link has the potential to improve patients’ medication experiences, safety, overall health, and quality of life for themselves and their caregivers while reducing health-system costs and demand,” noted the research team in their submission.
Christine Hughes and her research team are working with the Alberta Pharmacists Association to examine the provision of patient services under the province's Pharmacy Services Framework.
Related link:
Dr. Barbara Farrell of the Bruyère Research Institute in Ottawa has been awarded $50,000 to support her research project on “Mobilizing Community Pharmacists as Catalysts for Deprescribing.” Based at the Institute, Farrell and her team will work with community pharmacy practices and a national advisory group (with provider and private payer representation) over a one-year period to develop acceptable workflow strategies for deprescribing guideline use.
Research associates will work with each pharmacy to quantify opportunities for deprescribing, describe activities and processes associated with guideline use—including how long such activities take—and highlight enablers and barriers that pharmacists encounter. This project is expected to lay the foundation for a larger demonstration project examining reach, adoption and implementation of deprescribing strategies, and ultimately a randomized controlled trial of deprescribing interventions that explores patient and health system outcomes, including related cost savings.
Dr. Line Guénette of the Faculty of Pharmacy at Laval University and her team have received $26,800 to develop evidence-based electronic tools for community pharmacists to detect and improve medication non-adherence. Drawing on their previous research in medication adherence measures, the team aims to develop five electronic tools to target four common chronic disease areas (type 2 diabetes, hypertension, asthma and depression).
“We are committed to building tools that have acceptability, usability, utility, implementation and ways to improve e-tools for supporting pharmacy practice,” says Guénette, noting that the initial focus will be on diabetes and depression. “By developing and providing new tools to better identify patients having adherence problems, we will engage and support pharmacists with their crucial role regarding …medication efficacy/safety."
University of Toronto’s Sara Guilcher and her team were also honoured with a 2016 Innovation Fund grant worth $38,000 to establish and evaluate the feasibility of an Acute care to Community Pharmacy Communication Link (ACC-Link) to improve medication management across transitions of care.
Building on existing best evidence around successful medication management interventions, the ACC-Link provides communication between hospital and community pharmacists to actively equip the latter with information needed to guide patients and their families at the point of hospital discharge. By evaluating the feasibility of the intervention and understanding the factors that may influence implementation, the researchers are expecting the program can be scaled to fit other clinical settings.
“Ultimately, ACC-Link has the potential to improve patients’ medication experiences, safety, overall health, and quality of life for themselves and their caregivers while reducing health-system costs and demand,” noted the research team in their submission.
Christine Hughes and her research team are working with the Alberta Pharmacists Association to examine the provision of patient services under the province's Pharmacy Services Framework.
Related link:
Sherilyn Houle is investigating the clinical effectiveness and patients' satisfaction with travel medicine services provided by pharmacists with independent prescribing authority.
Related link:
Dr. Barbara Farrell of the Bruyère Research Institute in Ottawa has been awarded $50,000 to support her research project on “Mobilizing Community Pharmacists as Catalysts for Deprescribing.” Based at the Institute, Farrell and her team will work with community pharmacy practices and a national advisory group (with provider and private payer representation) over a one-year period to develop acceptable workflow strategies for deprescribing guideline use.
Research associates will work with each pharmacy to quantify opportunities for deprescribing, describe activities and processes associated with guideline use—including how long such activities take—and highlight enablers and barriers that pharmacists encounter. This project is expected to lay the foundation for a larger demonstration project examining reach, adoption and implementation of deprescribing strategies, and ultimately a randomized controlled trial of deprescribing interventions that explores patient and health system outcomes, including related cost savings.
Dr. Line Guénette of the Faculty of Pharmacy at Laval University and her team have received $26,800 to develop evidence-based electronic tools for community pharmacists to detect and improve medication non-adherence. Drawing on their previous research in medication adherence measures, the team aims to develop five electronic tools to target four common chronic disease areas (type 2 diabetes, hypertension, asthma and depression).
“We are committed to building tools that have acceptability, usability, utility, implementation and ways to improve e-tools for supporting pharmacy practice,” says Guénette, noting that the initial focus will be on diabetes and depression. “By developing and providing new tools to better identify patients having adherence problems, we will engage and support pharmacists with their crucial role regarding …medication efficacy/safety."
University of Toronto’s Sara Guilcher and her team were also honoured with a 2016 Innovation Fund grant worth $38,000 to establish and evaluate the feasibility of an Acute care to Community Pharmacy Communication Link (ACC-Link) to improve medication management across transitions of care.
Building on existing best evidence around successful medication management interventions, the ACC-Link provides communication between hospital and community pharmacists to actively equip the latter with information needed to guide patients and their families at the point of hospital discharge. By evaluating the feasibility of the intervention and understanding the factors that may influence implementation, the researchers are expecting the program can be scaled to fit other clinical settings.
“Ultimately, ACC-Link has the potential to improve patients’ medication experiences, safety, overall health, and quality of life for themselves and their caregivers while reducing health-system costs and demand,” noted the research team in their submission.
Christine Hughes and her research team are working with the Alberta Pharmacists Association to examine the provision of patient services under the province's Pharmacy Services Framework.
Related link:
Sherilyn Houle is investigating the clinical effectiveness and patients' satisfaction with travel medicine services provided by pharmacists with independent prescribing authority.
Related link:
Working with a physician in a primary care setting, Tejal Patel is examining how pharmacist interventions can reduce polypharmacy and high-risk medication use among the frail elderly.
Related link:
Dr. Barbara Farrell of the Bruyère Research Institute in Ottawa has been awarded $50,000 to support her research project on “Mobilizing Community Pharmacists as Catalysts for Deprescribing.” Based at the Institute, Farrell and her team will work with community pharmacy practices and a national advisory group (with provider and private payer representation) over a one-year period to develop acceptable workflow strategies for deprescribing guideline use.
Research associates will work with each pharmacy to quantify opportunities for deprescribing, describe activities and processes associated with guideline use—including how long such activities take—and highlight enablers and barriers that pharmacists encounter. This project is expected to lay the foundation for a larger demonstration project examining reach, adoption and implementation of deprescribing strategies, and ultimately a randomized controlled trial of deprescribing interventions that explores patient and health system outcomes, including related cost savings.
Dr. Line Guénette of the Faculty of Pharmacy at Laval University and her team have received $26,800 to develop evidence-based electronic tools for community pharmacists to detect and improve medication non-adherence. Drawing on their previous research in medication adherence measures, the team aims to develop five electronic tools to target four common chronic disease areas (type 2 diabetes, hypertension, asthma and depression).
“We are committed to building tools that have acceptability, usability, utility, implementation and ways to improve e-tools for supporting pharmacy practice,” says Guénette, noting that the initial focus will be on diabetes and depression. “By developing and providing new tools to better identify patients having adherence problems, we will engage and support pharmacists with their crucial role regarding …medication efficacy/safety."
University of Toronto’s Sara Guilcher and her team were also honoured with a 2016 Innovation Fund grant worth $38,000 to establish and evaluate the feasibility of an Acute care to Community Pharmacy Communication Link (ACC-Link) to improve medication management across transitions of care.
Building on existing best evidence around successful medication management interventions, the ACC-Link provides communication between hospital and community pharmacists to actively equip the latter with information needed to guide patients and their families at the point of hospital discharge. By evaluating the feasibility of the intervention and understanding the factors that may influence implementation, the researchers are expecting the program can be scaled to fit other clinical settings.
“Ultimately, ACC-Link has the potential to improve patients’ medication experiences, safety, overall health, and quality of life for themselves and their caregivers while reducing health-system costs and demand,” noted the research team in their submission.
Christine Hughes and her research team are working with the Alberta Pharmacists Association to examine the provision of patient services under the province's Pharmacy Services Framework.
Related link:
Sherilyn Houle is investigating the clinical effectiveness and patients' satisfaction with travel medicine services provided by pharmacists with independent prescribing authority.
Related link:
Working with a physician in a primary care setting, Tejal Patel is examining how pharmacist interventions can reduce polypharmacy and high-risk medication use among the frail elderly.
Related link:
The Evaluation of Pharmacist Prescribing for Minor Ailments - The Clinical and Economic Value
Now that pharmacists in some provinces can prescribe for minor ailments, what’s the impact on patients’ health? It’s a question that researchers in at the University Saskatchewan are keen to answer with a multiple-phase study, funded in part by the CFP.
Phase one in 2012-2013, funded by the provincial government, surveyed 125 pharmacy customers who’d been prescribed at least one medication for a minor ailment at one of 90 participating pharmacies. The study tracked the most common minor ailments treated and captured customers' perceptions of pharmacists. During phase two in 2015, researchers collected feedback about the process from pharmacists and physicians. Preliminary findings are mixed, with some resistance from some physicians. Researchers also returned to patients to capture their additional feedback. The final phase of the research, released in 2017, assessed and projected the economic impact of pharmacists prescribing for minor ailments.
Related articles:
Patient Perspectives on Symptom Severity (SelfCare 2016)
Minor Ailment Prescribing: Part 2 - Physician Feedback (SelfCare 2016)
Minor Ailment Prescribing: Part 1 - Pharmacist Feedback (SelfCare 2016)
Pharmacist-led minor ailment programs: a Canadian perspective (Int J Gen Med. 2016)
Evaluating pharmacist prescribing for minor ailments (Int J Pharm Pract. 2015)
2015 Changing Face of Pharmacy report (page 18)
2014 news article - Vote of confidence for minor ailments
Dr. Barbara Farrell of the Bruyère Research Institute in Ottawa has been awarded $50,000 to support her research project on “Mobilizing Community Pharmacists as Catalysts for Deprescribing.” Based at the Institute, Farrell and her team will work with community pharmacy practices and a national advisory group (with provider and private payer representation) over a one-year period to develop acceptable workflow strategies for deprescribing guideline use.
Research associates will work with each pharmacy to quantify opportunities for deprescribing, describe activities and processes associated with guideline use—including how long such activities take—and highlight enablers and barriers that pharmacists encounter. This project is expected to lay the foundation for a larger demonstration project examining reach, adoption and implementation of deprescribing strategies, and ultimately a randomized controlled trial of deprescribing interventions that explores patient and health system outcomes, including related cost savings.
Dr. Line Guénette of the Faculty of Pharmacy at Laval University and her team have received $26,800 to develop evidence-based electronic tools for community pharmacists to detect and improve medication non-adherence. Drawing on their previous research in medication adherence measures, the team aims to develop five electronic tools to target four common chronic disease areas (type 2 diabetes, hypertension, asthma and depression).
“We are committed to building tools that have acceptability, usability, utility, implementation and ways to improve e-tools for supporting pharmacy practice,” says Guénette, noting that the initial focus will be on diabetes and depression. “By developing and providing new tools to better identify patients having adherence problems, we will engage and support pharmacists with their crucial role regarding …medication efficacy/safety."
University of Toronto’s Sara Guilcher and her team were also honoured with a 2016 Innovation Fund grant worth $38,000 to establish and evaluate the feasibility of an Acute care to Community Pharmacy Communication Link (ACC-Link) to improve medication management across transitions of care.
Building on existing best evidence around successful medication management interventions, the ACC-Link provides communication between hospital and community pharmacists to actively equip the latter with information needed to guide patients and their families at the point of hospital discharge. By evaluating the feasibility of the intervention and understanding the factors that may influence implementation, the researchers are expecting the program can be scaled to fit other clinical settings.
“Ultimately, ACC-Link has the potential to improve patients’ medication experiences, safety, overall health, and quality of life for themselves and their caregivers while reducing health-system costs and demand,” noted the research team in their submission.
Christine Hughes and her research team are working with the Alberta Pharmacists Association to examine the provision of patient services under the province's Pharmacy Services Framework.
Related link:
Sherilyn Houle is investigating the clinical effectiveness and patients' satisfaction with travel medicine services provided by pharmacists with independent prescribing authority.
Related link:
Working with a physician in a primary care setting, Tejal Patel is examining how pharmacist interventions can reduce polypharmacy and high-risk medication use among the frail elderly.
Related link:
The Evaluation of Pharmacist Prescribing for Minor Ailments - The Clinical and Economic Value
Now that pharmacists in some provinces can prescribe for minor ailments, what’s the impact on patients’ health? It’s a question that researchers in at the University Saskatchewan are keen to answer with a multiple-phase study, funded in part by the CFP.
Phase one in 2012-2013, funded by the provincial government, surveyed 125 pharmacy customers who’d been prescribed at least one medication for a minor ailment at one of 90 participating pharmacies. The study tracked the most common minor ailments treated and captured customers' perceptions of pharmacists. During phase two in 2015, researchers collected feedback about the process from pharmacists and physicians. Preliminary findings are mixed, with some resistance from some physicians. Researchers also returned to patients to capture their additional feedback. The final phase of the research, released in 2017, assessed and projected the economic impact of pharmacists prescribing for minor ailments.
Related articles:
Patient Perspectives on Symptom Severity (SelfCare 2016)
Minor Ailment Prescribing: Part 2 - Physician Feedback (SelfCare 2016)
Minor Ailment Prescribing: Part 1 - Pharmacist Feedback (SelfCare 2016)
Pharmacist-led minor ailment programs: a Canadian perspective (Int J Gen Med. 2016)
Evaluating pharmacist prescribing for minor ailments (Int J Pharm Pract. 2015)
2015 Changing Face of Pharmacy report (page 18)
2014 news article - Vote of confidence for minor ailments
Assessing need and benefits of home-based medication review services for non-homebound patients
Toronto-based community pharmacist John Papastergiou and his research team are assessing the benefits of providing home-based medication reviews to non-homebound patients. Currently, Ontario's MedsCheck for Home program reimburses pharmacists only for reviews conducted for homebound patients. Findings from previous research, however, as well as experiences with patients in the pharmacy, indicate that that there are medication-management issues that are best addressed in the home environment, whether or not the patient is homebound (for example, expired or discontinued medications). Senior patients taking five or more chronic medications are being recruited for the 12-month study, which reimburses participating pharmacists for their services to patients and for time spent documenting interventions.
Related article:
2017 news article - Home visits warranted for non-housebound
Dr. Barbara Farrell of the Bruyère Research Institute in Ottawa has been awarded $50,000 to support her research project on “Mobilizing Community Pharmacists as Catalysts for Deprescribing.” Based at the Institute, Farrell and her team will work with community pharmacy practices and a national advisory group (with provider and private payer representation) over a one-year period to develop acceptable workflow strategies for deprescribing guideline use.
Research associates will work with each pharmacy to quantify opportunities for deprescribing, describe activities and processes associated with guideline use—including how long such activities take—and highlight enablers and barriers that pharmacists encounter. This project is expected to lay the foundation for a larger demonstration project examining reach, adoption and implementation of deprescribing strategies, and ultimately a randomized controlled trial of deprescribing interventions that explores patient and health system outcomes, including related cost savings.
Dr. Line Guénette of the Faculty of Pharmacy at Laval University and her team have received $26,800 to develop evidence-based electronic tools for community pharmacists to detect and improve medication non-adherence. Drawing on their previous research in medication adherence measures, the team aims to develop five electronic tools to target four common chronic disease areas (type 2 diabetes, hypertension, asthma and depression).
“We are committed to building tools that have acceptability, usability, utility, implementation and ways to improve e-tools for supporting pharmacy practice,” says Guénette, noting that the initial focus will be on diabetes and depression. “By developing and providing new tools to better identify patients having adherence problems, we will engage and support pharmacists with their crucial role regarding …medication efficacy/safety."
University of Toronto’s Sara Guilcher and her team were also honoured with a 2016 Innovation Fund grant worth $38,000 to establish and evaluate the feasibility of an Acute care to Community Pharmacy Communication Link (ACC-Link) to improve medication management across transitions of care.
Building on existing best evidence around successful medication management interventions, the ACC-Link provides communication between hospital and community pharmacists to actively equip the latter with information needed to guide patients and their families at the point of hospital discharge. By evaluating the feasibility of the intervention and understanding the factors that may influence implementation, the researchers are expecting the program can be scaled to fit other clinical settings.
“Ultimately, ACC-Link has the potential to improve patients’ medication experiences, safety, overall health, and quality of life for themselves and their caregivers while reducing health-system costs and demand,” noted the research team in their submission.
Christine Hughes and her research team are working with the Alberta Pharmacists Association to examine the provision of patient services under the province's Pharmacy Services Framework.
Related link:
Sherilyn Houle is investigating the clinical effectiveness and patients' satisfaction with travel medicine services provided by pharmacists with independent prescribing authority.
Related link:
Working with a physician in a primary care setting, Tejal Patel is examining how pharmacist interventions can reduce polypharmacy and high-risk medication use among the frail elderly.
Related link:
The Evaluation of Pharmacist Prescribing for Minor Ailments - The Clinical and Economic Value
Now that pharmacists in some provinces can prescribe for minor ailments, what’s the impact on patients’ health? It’s a question that researchers in at the University Saskatchewan are keen to answer with a multiple-phase study, funded in part by the CFP.
Phase one in 2012-2013, funded by the provincial government, surveyed 125 pharmacy customers who’d been prescribed at least one medication for a minor ailment at one of 90 participating pharmacies. The study tracked the most common minor ailments treated and captured customers' perceptions of pharmacists. During phase two in 2015, researchers collected feedback about the process from pharmacists and physicians. Preliminary findings are mixed, with some resistance from some physicians. Researchers also returned to patients to capture their additional feedback. The final phase of the research, released in 2017, assessed and projected the economic impact of pharmacists prescribing for minor ailments.
Related articles:
Patient Perspectives on Symptom Severity (SelfCare 2016)
Minor Ailment Prescribing: Part 2 - Physician Feedback (SelfCare 2016)
Minor Ailment Prescribing: Part 1 - Pharmacist Feedback (SelfCare 2016)
Pharmacist-led minor ailment programs: a Canadian perspective (Int J Gen Med. 2016)
Evaluating pharmacist prescribing for minor ailments (Int J Pharm Pract. 2015)
2015 Changing Face of Pharmacy report (page 18)
2014 news article - Vote of confidence for minor ailments
Assessing need and benefits of home-based medication review services for non-homebound patients
Toronto-based community pharmacist John Papastergiou and his research team are assessing the benefits of providing home-based medication reviews to non-homebound patients. Currently, Ontario's MedsCheck for Home program reimburses pharmacists only for reviews conducted for homebound patients. Findings from previous research, however, as well as experiences with patients in the pharmacy, indicate that that there are medication-management issues that are best addressed in the home environment, whether or not the patient is homebound (for example, expired or discontinued medications). Senior patients taking five or more chronic medications are being recruited for the 12-month study, which reimburses participating pharmacists for their services to patients and for time spent documenting interventions.
Related article:
2017 news article - Home visits warranted for non-housebound
Pharmacists' Innovative Drug Therapy Management Outcomes, Resource use and Economics (PHInDMORE)
The Canadian Foundation for Pharmacy awarded a grant of $35,000 in support of PhInDMORE, a collaboration between Drs. Carlo Marra and Larry Lynd from the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of British Columbia, and pharmacist John Shaske of Howe Sound Pharmacy. Howe Sound is piloting the province's new PharmaNet system, and PHInDMORE is reviewing pharmacists' interventions and their impacts on patient outcomes, both clinical and economic. PharmaNet is a central database that allows for capture of real-world, real-time documentation of pharmacist-patient encounters to a level of comprehensiveness that has never before been possible. The research aims to demonstrate that there is potential for cost savings to the healthcare system when investing in pharmacists to practice to their full potential.
Related link:
Dr. Barbara Farrell of the Bruyère Research Institute in Ottawa has been awarded $50,000 to support her research project on “Mobilizing Community Pharmacists as Catalysts for Deprescribing.” Based at the Institute, Farrell and her team will work with community pharmacy practices and a national advisory group (with provider and private payer representation) over a one-year period to develop acceptable workflow strategies for deprescribing guideline use.
Research associates will work with each pharmacy to quantify opportunities for deprescribing, describe activities and processes associated with guideline use—including how long such activities take—and highlight enablers and barriers that pharmacists encounter. This project is expected to lay the foundation for a larger demonstration project examining reach, adoption and implementation of deprescribing strategies, and ultimately a randomized controlled trial of deprescribing interventions that explores patient and health system outcomes, including related cost savings.
Dr. Line Guénette of the Faculty of Pharmacy at Laval University and her team have received $26,800 to develop evidence-based electronic tools for community pharmacists to detect and improve medication non-adherence. Drawing on their previous research in medication adherence measures, the team aims to develop five electronic tools to target four common chronic disease areas (type 2 diabetes, hypertension, asthma and depression).
“We are committed to building tools that have acceptability, usability, utility, implementation and ways to improve e-tools for supporting pharmacy practice,” says Guénette, noting that the initial focus will be on diabetes and depression. “By developing and providing new tools to better identify patients having adherence problems, we will engage and support pharmacists with their crucial role regarding …medication efficacy/safety."
University of Toronto’s Sara Guilcher and her team were also honoured with a 2016 Innovation Fund grant worth $38,000 to establish and evaluate the feasibility of an Acute care to Community Pharmacy Communication Link (ACC-Link) to improve medication management across transitions of care.
Building on existing best evidence around successful medication management interventions, the ACC-Link provides communication between hospital and community pharmacists to actively equip the latter with information needed to guide patients and their families at the point of hospital discharge. By evaluating the feasibility of the intervention and understanding the factors that may influence implementation, the researchers are expecting the program can be scaled to fit other clinical settings.
“Ultimately, ACC-Link has the potential to improve patients’ medication experiences, safety, overall health, and quality of life for themselves and their caregivers while reducing health-system costs and demand,” noted the research team in their submission.
Christine Hughes and her research team are working with the Alberta Pharmacists Association to examine the provision of patient services under the province's Pharmacy Services Framework.
Related link:
Sherilyn Houle is investigating the clinical effectiveness and patients' satisfaction with travel medicine services provided by pharmacists with independent prescribing authority.
Related link:
Working with a physician in a primary care setting, Tejal Patel is examining how pharmacist interventions can reduce polypharmacy and high-risk medication use among the frail elderly.
Related link:
The Evaluation of Pharmacist Prescribing for Minor Ailments - The Clinical and Economic Value
Now that pharmacists in some provinces can prescribe for minor ailments, what’s the impact on patients’ health? It’s a question that researchers in at the University Saskatchewan are keen to answer with a multiple-phase study, funded in part by the CFP.
Phase one in 2012-2013, funded by the provincial government, surveyed 125 pharmacy customers who’d been prescribed at least one medication for a minor ailment at one of 90 participating pharmacies. The study tracked the most common minor ailments treated and captured customers' perceptions of pharmacists. During phase two in 2015, researchers collected feedback about the process from pharmacists and physicians. Preliminary findings are mixed, with some resistance from some physicians. Researchers also returned to patients to capture their additional feedback. The final phase of the research, released in 2017, assessed and projected the economic impact of pharmacists prescribing for minor ailments.
Related articles:
Patient Perspectives on Symptom Severity (SelfCare 2016)
Minor Ailment Prescribing: Part 2 - Physician Feedback (SelfCare 2016)
Minor Ailment Prescribing: Part 1 - Pharmacist Feedback (SelfCare 2016)
Pharmacist-led minor ailment programs: a Canadian perspective (Int J Gen Med. 2016)
Evaluating pharmacist prescribing for minor ailments (Int J Pharm Pract. 2015)
2015 Changing Face of Pharmacy report (page 18)
2014 news article - Vote of confidence for minor ailments
Assessing need and benefits of home-based medication review services for non-homebound patients
Toronto-based community pharmacist John Papastergiou and his research team are assessing the benefits of providing home-based medication reviews to non-homebound patients. Currently, Ontario's MedsCheck for Home program reimburses pharmacists only for reviews conducted for homebound patients. Findings from previous research, however, as well as experiences with patients in the pharmacy, indicate that that there are medication-management issues that are best addressed in the home environment, whether or not the patient is homebound (for example, expired or discontinued medications). Senior patients taking five or more chronic medications are being recruited for the 12-month study, which reimburses participating pharmacists for their services to patients and for time spent documenting interventions.
Related article:
2017 news article - Home visits warranted for non-housebound
Pharmacists' Innovative Drug Therapy Management Outcomes, Resource use and Economics (PHInDMORE)
The Canadian Foundation for Pharmacy awarded a grant of $35,000 in support of PhInDMORE, a collaboration between Drs. Carlo Marra and Larry Lynd from the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of British Columbia, and pharmacist John Shaske of Howe Sound Pharmacy. Howe Sound is piloting the province's new PharmaNet system, and PHInDMORE is reviewing pharmacists' interventions and their impacts on patient outcomes, both clinical and economic. PharmaNet is a central database that allows for capture of real-world, real-time documentation of pharmacist-patient encounters to a level of comprehensiveness that has never before been possible. The research aims to demonstrate that there is potential for cost savings to the healthcare system when investing in pharmacists to practice to their full potential.
Related link:
Multi-partner smoking cessation project for vulnerable patient group
Pharmacists Manitoba partnered with Manitoba Health, Healthy Living and Seniors, the College of Pharmacists of Manitoba, Neighbourhood Pharmacy Association of Canada and researchers at the College of Pharmacy, University of Manitoba, to conduct a pilot project focused on helping low-income patient quit smoking. "We successfully reached out and worked with a very hard-to-reach population. Pharmacists proved that they are a key access point to a majority of the population, much more so than other healthcare providers," says Dr. Brenna Shearer, Chief Executive Officer of Pharmacists Manitoba.
In addition to $25,000 in funding from the Canadian Foundation for Pharmacy's Innovation Fund, this project was made possible through a matching grant from Pfizer Canada.
Related links:
2015 news article - MB smoking cessation helps vulnerable group
Dr. Barbara Farrell of the Bruyère Research Institute in Ottawa has been awarded $50,000 to support her research project on “Mobilizing Community Pharmacists as Catalysts for Deprescribing.” Based at the Institute, Farrell and her team will work with community pharmacy practices and a national advisory group (with provider and private payer representation) over a one-year period to develop acceptable workflow strategies for deprescribing guideline use.
Research associates will work with each pharmacy to quantify opportunities for deprescribing, describe activities and processes associated with guideline use—including how long such activities take—and highlight enablers and barriers that pharmacists encounter. This project is expected to lay the foundation for a larger demonstration project examining reach, adoption and implementation of deprescribing strategies, and ultimately a randomized controlled trial of deprescribing interventions that explores patient and health system outcomes, including related cost savings.
Dr. Line Guénette of the Faculty of Pharmacy at Laval University and her team have received $26,800 to develop evidence-based electronic tools for community pharmacists to detect and improve medication non-adherence. Drawing on their previous research in medication adherence measures, the team aims to develop five electronic tools to target four common chronic disease areas (type 2 diabetes, hypertension, asthma and depression).
“We are committed to building tools that have acceptability, usability, utility, implementation and ways to improve e-tools for supporting pharmacy practice,” says Guénette, noting that the initial focus will be on diabetes and depression. “By developing and providing new tools to better identify patients having adherence problems, we will engage and support pharmacists with their crucial role regarding …medication efficacy/safety."
University of Toronto’s Sara Guilcher and her team were also honoured with a 2016 Innovation Fund grant worth $38,000 to establish and evaluate the feasibility of an Acute care to Community Pharmacy Communication Link (ACC-Link) to improve medication management across transitions of care.
Building on existing best evidence around successful medication management interventions, the ACC-Link provides communication between hospital and community pharmacists to actively equip the latter with information needed to guide patients and their families at the point of hospital discharge. By evaluating the feasibility of the intervention and understanding the factors that may influence implementation, the researchers are expecting the program can be scaled to fit other clinical settings.
“Ultimately, ACC-Link has the potential to improve patients’ medication experiences, safety, overall health, and quality of life for themselves and their caregivers while reducing health-system costs and demand,” noted the research team in their submission.
Christine Hughes and her research team are working with the Alberta Pharmacists Association to examine the provision of patient services under the province's Pharmacy Services Framework.
Related link:
Sherilyn Houle is investigating the clinical effectiveness and patients' satisfaction with travel medicine services provided by pharmacists with independent prescribing authority.
Related link:
Working with a physician in a primary care setting, Tejal Patel is examining how pharmacist interventions can reduce polypharmacy and high-risk medication use among the frail elderly.
Related link:
The Evaluation of Pharmacist Prescribing for Minor Ailments - The Clinical and Economic Value
Now that pharmacists in some provinces can prescribe for minor ailments, what’s the impact on patients’ health? It’s a question that researchers in at the University Saskatchewan are keen to answer with a multiple-phase study, funded in part by the CFP.
Phase one in 2012-2013, funded by the provincial government, surveyed 125 pharmacy customers who’d been prescribed at least one medication for a minor ailment at one of 90 participating pharmacies. The study tracked the most common minor ailments treated and captured customers' perceptions of pharmacists. During phase two in 2015, researchers collected feedback about the process from pharmacists and physicians. Preliminary findings are mixed, with some resistance from some physicians. Researchers also returned to patients to capture their additional feedback. The final phase of the research, released in 2017, assessed and projected the economic impact of pharmacists prescribing for minor ailments.
Related articles:
Patient Perspectives on Symptom Severity (SelfCare 2016)
Minor Ailment Prescribing: Part 2 - Physician Feedback (SelfCare 2016)
Minor Ailment Prescribing: Part 1 - Pharmacist Feedback (SelfCare 2016)
Pharmacist-led minor ailment programs: a Canadian perspective (Int J Gen Med. 2016)
Evaluating pharmacist prescribing for minor ailments (Int J Pharm Pract. 2015)
2015 Changing Face of Pharmacy report (page 18)
2014 news article - Vote of confidence for minor ailments
Assessing need and benefits of home-based medication review services for non-homebound patients
Toronto-based community pharmacist John Papastergiou and his research team are assessing the benefits of providing home-based medication reviews to non-homebound patients. Currently, Ontario's MedsCheck for Home program reimburses pharmacists only for reviews conducted for homebound patients. Findings from previous research, however, as well as experiences with patients in the pharmacy, indicate that that there are medication-management issues that are best addressed in the home environment, whether or not the patient is homebound (for example, expired or discontinued medications). Senior patients taking five or more chronic medications are being recruited for the 12-month study, which reimburses participating pharmacists for their services to patients and for time spent documenting interventions.
Related article:
2017 news article - Home visits warranted for non-housebound
Pharmacists' Innovative Drug Therapy Management Outcomes, Resource use and Economics (PHInDMORE)
The Canadian Foundation for Pharmacy awarded a grant of $35,000 in support of PhInDMORE, a collaboration between Drs. Carlo Marra and Larry Lynd from the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of British Columbia, and pharmacist John Shaske of Howe Sound Pharmacy. Howe Sound is piloting the province's new PharmaNet system, and PHInDMORE is reviewing pharmacists' interventions and their impacts on patient outcomes, both clinical and economic. PharmaNet is a central database that allows for capture of real-world, real-time documentation of pharmacist-patient encounters to a level of comprehensiveness that has never before been possible. The research aims to demonstrate that there is potential for cost savings to the healthcare system when investing in pharmacists to practice to their full potential.
Related link:
Multi-partner smoking cessation project for vulnerable patient group
Pharmacists Manitoba partnered with Manitoba Health, Healthy Living and Seniors, the College of Pharmacists of Manitoba, Neighbourhood Pharmacy Association of Canada and researchers at the College of Pharmacy, University of Manitoba, to conduct a pilot project focused on helping low-income patient quit smoking. "We successfully reached out and worked with a very hard-to-reach population. Pharmacists proved that they are a key access point to a majority of the population, much more so than other healthcare providers," says Dr. Brenna Shearer, Chief Executive Officer of Pharmacists Manitoba.
In addition to $25,000 in funding from the Canadian Foundation for Pharmacy's Innovation Fund, this project was made possible through a matching grant from Pfizer Canada.
Related links:
2015 news article - MB smoking cessation helps vulnerable group
Safety Alerts as Drivers for Pharmaceutical Opinion Program: A Pilot Study to Reduce Potential Hospitalizations due to Preventable Drug-Drug Interactions
The Canadian Foundation for Pharmacy's Innovation Fund Grant of $50,000 supports a research project under the guidance of Principal Investigator Certina Ho, ISMP Canada and School of Pharmacy, University of Waterloo, to analyze and support the role of pharmacist to prevent medication errors, while generating new revenue streams via Ontario's funded Pharmaceutical Opinions program.
Related link:
2015 article in Pharmacy Practice+ - Safety alerts a win for patients, pharmacists, government
Dr. Barbara Farrell of the Bruyère Research Institute in Ottawa has been awarded $50,000 to support her research project on “Mobilizing Community Pharmacists as Catalysts for Deprescribing.” Based at the Institute, Farrell and her team will work with community pharmacy practices and a national advisory group (with provider and private payer representation) over a one-year period to develop acceptable workflow strategies for deprescribing guideline use.
Research associates will work with each pharmacy to quantify opportunities for deprescribing, describe activities and processes associated with guideline use—including how long such activities take—and highlight enablers and barriers that pharmacists encounter. This project is expected to lay the foundation for a larger demonstration project examining reach, adoption and implementation of deprescribing strategies, and ultimately a randomized controlled trial of deprescribing interventions that explores patient and health system outcomes, including related cost savings.
Dr. Line Guénette of the Faculty of Pharmacy at Laval University and her team have received $26,800 to develop evidence-based electronic tools for community pharmacists to detect and improve medication non-adherence. Drawing on their previous research in medication adherence measures, the team aims to develop five electronic tools to target four common chronic disease areas (type 2 diabetes, hypertension, asthma and depression).
“We are committed to building tools that have acceptability, usability, utility, implementation and ways to improve e-tools for supporting pharmacy practice,” says Guénette, noting that the initial focus will be on diabetes and depression. “By developing and providing new tools to better identify patients having adherence problems, we will engage and support pharmacists with their crucial role regarding …medication efficacy/safety."
University of Toronto’s Sara Guilcher and her team were also honoured with a 2016 Innovation Fund grant worth $38,000 to establish and evaluate the feasibility of an Acute care to Community Pharmacy Communication Link (ACC-Link) to improve medication management across transitions of care.
Building on existing best evidence around successful medication management interventions, the ACC-Link provides communication between hospital and community pharmacists to actively equip the latter with information needed to guide patients and their families at the point of hospital discharge. By evaluating the feasibility of the intervention and understanding the factors that may influence implementation, the researchers are expecting the program can be scaled to fit other clinical settings.
“Ultimately, ACC-Link has the potential to improve patients’ medication experiences, safety, overall health, and quality of life for themselves and their caregivers while reducing health-system costs and demand,” noted the research team in their submission.
Christine Hughes and her research team are working with the Alberta Pharmacists Association to examine the provision of patient services under the province's Pharmacy Services Framework.
Related link:
Sherilyn Houle is investigating the clinical effectiveness and patients' satisfaction with travel medicine services provided by pharmacists with independent prescribing authority.
Related link:
Working with a physician in a primary care setting, Tejal Patel is examining how pharmacist interventions can reduce polypharmacy and high-risk medication use among the frail elderly.
Related link:
The Evaluation of Pharmacist Prescribing for Minor Ailments - The Clinical and Economic Value
Now that pharmacists in some provinces can prescribe for minor ailments, what’s the impact on patients’ health? It’s a question that researchers in at the University Saskatchewan are keen to answer with a multiple-phase study, funded in part by the CFP.
Phase one in 2012-2013, funded by the provincial government, surveyed 125 pharmacy customers who’d been prescribed at least one medication for a minor ailment at one of 90 participating pharmacies. The study tracked the most common minor ailments treated and captured customers' perceptions of pharmacists. During phase two in 2015, researchers collected feedback about the process from pharmacists and physicians. Preliminary findings are mixed, with some resistance from some physicians. Researchers also returned to patients to capture their additional feedback. The final phase of the research, released in 2017, assessed and projected the economic impact of pharmacists prescribing for minor ailments.
Related articles:
Patient Perspectives on Symptom Severity (SelfCare 2016)
Minor Ailment Prescribing: Part 2 - Physician Feedback (SelfCare 2016)
Minor Ailment Prescribing: Part 1 - Pharmacist Feedback (SelfCare 2016)
Pharmacist-led minor ailment programs: a Canadian perspective (Int J Gen Med. 2016)
Evaluating pharmacist prescribing for minor ailments (Int J Pharm Pract. 2015)
2015 Changing Face of Pharmacy report (page 18)
2014 news article - Vote of confidence for minor ailments
Assessing need and benefits of home-based medication review services for non-homebound patients
Toronto-based community pharmacist John Papastergiou and his research team are assessing the benefits of providing home-based medication reviews to non-homebound patients. Currently, Ontario's MedsCheck for Home program reimburses pharmacists only for reviews conducted for homebound patients. Findings from previous research, however, as well as experiences with patients in the pharmacy, indicate that that there are medication-management issues that are best addressed in the home environment, whether or not the patient is homebound (for example, expired or discontinued medications). Senior patients taking five or more chronic medications are being recruited for the 12-month study, which reimburses participating pharmacists for their services to patients and for time spent documenting interventions.
Related article:
2017 news article - Home visits warranted for non-housebound
Pharmacists' Innovative Drug Therapy Management Outcomes, Resource use and Economics (PHInDMORE)
The Canadian Foundation for Pharmacy awarded a grant of $35,000 in support of PhInDMORE, a collaboration between Drs. Carlo Marra and Larry Lynd from the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of British Columbia, and pharmacist John Shaske of Howe Sound Pharmacy. Howe Sound is piloting the province's new PharmaNet system, and PHInDMORE is reviewing pharmacists' interventions and their impacts on patient outcomes, both clinical and economic. PharmaNet is a central database that allows for capture of real-world, real-time documentation of pharmacist-patient encounters to a level of comprehensiveness that has never before been possible. The research aims to demonstrate that there is potential for cost savings to the healthcare system when investing in pharmacists to practice to their full potential.
Related link:
Multi-partner smoking cessation project for vulnerable patient group
Pharmacists Manitoba partnered with Manitoba Health, Healthy Living and Seniors, the College of Pharmacists of Manitoba, Neighbourhood Pharmacy Association of Canada and researchers at the College of Pharmacy, University of Manitoba, to conduct a pilot project focused on helping low-income patient quit smoking. "We successfully reached out and worked with a very hard-to-reach population. Pharmacists proved that they are a key access point to a majority of the population, much more so than other healthcare providers," says Dr. Brenna Shearer, Chief Executive Officer of Pharmacists Manitoba.
In addition to $25,000 in funding from the Canadian Foundation for Pharmacy's Innovation Fund, this project was made possible through a matching grant from Pfizer Canada.
Related links:
2015 news article - MB smoking cessation helps vulnerable group
Safety Alerts as Drivers for Pharmaceutical Opinion Program: A Pilot Study to Reduce Potential Hospitalizations due to Preventable Drug-Drug Interactions
The Canadian Foundation for Pharmacy's Innovation Fund Grant of $50,000 supports a research project under the guidance of Principal Investigator Certina Ho, ISMP Canada and School of Pharmacy, University of Waterloo, to analyze and support the role of pharmacist to prevent medication errors, while generating new revenue streams via Ontario's funded Pharmaceutical Opinions program.
Related link:
2015 article in Pharmacy Practice+ - Safety alerts a win for patients, pharmacists, government
Pharmacists: Personalized Medicine Experts in Primary Care
Led by Lisa McCarthy (PharmD MSc), (Women’s College Hospital (WCH) and Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto), this multi-phase project will equip primary care pharmacists with the knowledge and skills required to take a lead role as personalized medicine experts in our health system and evaluate the impact on patients’ health outcomes.
Related links:
2016 article and video, www.CanadianHealthcareNetwork.ca
2016 news article: Personalized medicine in community practice
Dr. Barbara Farrell of the Bruyère Research Institute in Ottawa has been awarded $50,000 to support her research project on “Mobilizing Community Pharmacists as Catalysts for Deprescribing.” Based at the Institute, Farrell and her team will work with community pharmacy practices and a national advisory group (with provider and private payer representation) over a one-year period to develop acceptable workflow strategies for deprescribing guideline use.
Research associates will work with each pharmacy to quantify opportunities for deprescribing, describe activities and processes associated with guideline use—including how long such activities take—and highlight enablers and barriers that pharmacists encounter. This project is expected to lay the foundation for a larger demonstration project examining reach, adoption and implementation of deprescribing strategies, and ultimately a randomized controlled trial of deprescribing interventions that explores patient and health system outcomes, including related cost savings.
Dr. Line Guénette of the Faculty of Pharmacy at Laval University and her team have received $26,800 to develop evidence-based electronic tools for community pharmacists to detect and improve medication non-adherence. Drawing on their previous research in medication adherence measures, the team aims to develop five electronic tools to target four common chronic disease areas (type 2 diabetes, hypertension, asthma and depression).
“We are committed to building tools that have acceptability, usability, utility, implementation and ways to improve e-tools for supporting pharmacy practice,” says Guénette, noting that the initial focus will be on diabetes and depression. “By developing and providing new tools to better identify patients having adherence problems, we will engage and support pharmacists with their crucial role regarding …medication efficacy/safety."
University of Toronto’s Sara Guilcher and her team were also honoured with a 2016 Innovation Fund grant worth $38,000 to establish and evaluate the feasibility of an Acute care to Community Pharmacy Communication Link (ACC-Link) to improve medication management across transitions of care.
Building on existing best evidence around successful medication management interventions, the ACC-Link provides communication between hospital and community pharmacists to actively equip the latter with information needed to guide patients and their families at the point of hospital discharge. By evaluating the feasibility of the intervention and understanding the factors that may influence implementation, the researchers are expecting the program can be scaled to fit other clinical settings.
“Ultimately, ACC-Link has the potential to improve patients’ medication experiences, safety, overall health, and quality of life for themselves and their caregivers while reducing health-system costs and demand,” noted the research team in their submission.
Christine Hughes and her research team are working with the Alberta Pharmacists Association to examine the provision of patient services under the province's Pharmacy Services Framework.
Related link:
Sherilyn Houle is investigating the clinical effectiveness and patients' satisfaction with travel medicine services provided by pharmacists with independent prescribing authority.
Related link:
Working with a physician in a primary care setting, Tejal Patel is examining how pharmacist interventions can reduce polypharmacy and high-risk medication use among the frail elderly.
Related link:
The Evaluation of Pharmacist Prescribing for Minor Ailments - The Clinical and Economic Value
Now that pharmacists in some provinces can prescribe for minor ailments, what’s the impact on patients’ health? It’s a question that researchers in at the University Saskatchewan are keen to answer with a multiple-phase study, funded in part by the CFP.
Phase one in 2012-2013, funded by the provincial government, surveyed 125 pharmacy customers who’d been prescribed at least one medication for a minor ailment at one of 90 participating pharmacies. The study tracked the most common minor ailments treated and captured customers' perceptions of pharmacists. During phase two in 2015, researchers collected feedback about the process from pharmacists and physicians. Preliminary findings are mixed, with some resistance from some physicians. Researchers also returned to patients to capture their additional feedback. The final phase of the research, released in 2017, assessed and projected the economic impact of pharmacists prescribing for minor ailments.
Related articles:
Patient Perspectives on Symptom Severity (SelfCare 2016)
Minor Ailment Prescribing: Part 2 - Physician Feedback (SelfCare 2016)
Minor Ailment Prescribing: Part 1 - Pharmacist Feedback (SelfCare 2016)
Pharmacist-led minor ailment programs: a Canadian perspective (Int J Gen Med. 2016)
Evaluating pharmacist prescribing for minor ailments (Int J Pharm Pract. 2015)
2015 Changing Face of Pharmacy report (page 18)
2014 news article - Vote of confidence for minor ailments
Assessing need and benefits of home-based medication review services for non-homebound patients
Toronto-based community pharmacist John Papastergiou and his research team are assessing the benefits of providing home-based medication reviews to non-homebound patients. Currently, Ontario's MedsCheck for Home program reimburses pharmacists only for reviews conducted for homebound patients. Findings from previous research, however, as well as experiences with patients in the pharmacy, indicate that that there are medication-management issues that are best addressed in the home environment, whether or not the patient is homebound (for example, expired or discontinued medications). Senior patients taking five or more chronic medications are being recruited for the 12-month study, which reimburses participating pharmacists for their services to patients and for time spent documenting interventions.
Related article:
2017 news article - Home visits warranted for non-housebound
Pharmacists' Innovative Drug Therapy Management Outcomes, Resource use and Economics (PHInDMORE)
The Canadian Foundation for Pharmacy awarded a grant of $35,000 in support of PhInDMORE, a collaboration between Drs. Carlo Marra and Larry Lynd from the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of British Columbia, and pharmacist John Shaske of Howe Sound Pharmacy. Howe Sound is piloting the province's new PharmaNet system, and PHInDMORE is reviewing pharmacists' interventions and their impacts on patient outcomes, both clinical and economic. PharmaNet is a central database that allows for capture of real-world, real-time documentation of pharmacist-patient encounters to a level of comprehensiveness that has never before been possible. The research aims to demonstrate that there is potential for cost savings to the healthcare system when investing in pharmacists to practice to their full potential.
Related link:
Multi-partner smoking cessation project for vulnerable patient group
Pharmacists Manitoba partnered with Manitoba Health, Healthy Living and Seniors, the College of Pharmacists of Manitoba, Neighbourhood Pharmacy Association of Canada and researchers at the College of Pharmacy, University of Manitoba, to conduct a pilot project focused on helping low-income patient quit smoking. "We successfully reached out and worked with a very hard-to-reach population. Pharmacists proved that they are a key access point to a majority of the population, much more so than other healthcare providers," says Dr. Brenna Shearer, Chief Executive Officer of Pharmacists Manitoba.
In addition to $25,000 in funding from the Canadian Foundation for Pharmacy's Innovation Fund, this project was made possible through a matching grant from Pfizer Canada.
Related links:
2015 news article - MB smoking cessation helps vulnerable group
Safety Alerts as Drivers for Pharmaceutical Opinion Program: A Pilot Study to Reduce Potential Hospitalizations due to Preventable Drug-Drug Interactions
The Canadian Foundation for Pharmacy's Innovation Fund Grant of $50,000 supports a research project under the guidance of Principal Investigator Certina Ho, ISMP Canada and School of Pharmacy, University of Waterloo, to analyze and support the role of pharmacist to prevent medication errors, while generating new revenue streams via Ontario's funded Pharmaceutical Opinions program.
Related link:
2015 article in Pharmacy Practice+ - Safety alerts a win for patients, pharmacists, government
Pharmacists: Personalized Medicine Experts in Primary Care
Led by Lisa McCarthy (PharmD MSc), (Women’s College Hospital (WCH) and Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto), this multi-phase project will equip primary care pharmacists with the knowledge and skills required to take a lead role as personalized medicine experts in our health system and evaluate the impact on patients’ health outcomes.
Related links:
2016 article and video, www.CanadianHealthcareNetwork.ca
2016 news article: Personalized medicine in community practice
Impact of Community Pharmacist Interventions in Hypertension Management in Patient Outcomes: A Randomized Control Trial
Canadian Foundation for Pharmacy's $50,000 grant from its Innovation Fund supported ground-breaking research on the impact of regularly scheduled pharmacists' interventions with patients with uncontrolled hypertension in the working population. Pharmacists not only significantly helped improve blood pressure control, but were recognized as effective sources of support for changes in lifestyle behaviours. Green Shield Canada has since launched a pharmacists coaching program for cardiovascular health, available as a core benefit for its clients with drug plans.
Related links:
2015 news article - Insurer invests in CV coaching
2014 news article - Green Shield/OPA results promising for pharmacists
2014 final project report - Ontario Pharmacists Association & Green Shield Canada
Dr. Barbara Farrell of the Bruyère Research Institute in Ottawa has been awarded $50,000 to support her research project on “Mobilizing Community Pharmacists as Catalysts for Deprescribing.” Based at the Institute, Farrell and her team will work with community pharmacy practices and a national advisory group (with provider and private payer representation) over a one-year period to develop acceptable workflow strategies for deprescribing guideline use.
Research associates will work with each pharmacy to quantify opportunities for deprescribing, describe activities and processes associated with guideline use—including how long such activities take—and highlight enablers and barriers that pharmacists encounter. This project is expected to lay the foundation for a larger demonstration project examining reach, adoption and implementation of deprescribing strategies, and ultimately a randomized controlled trial of deprescribing interventions that explores patient and health system outcomes, including related cost savings.
Dr. Line Guénette of the Faculty of Pharmacy at Laval University and her team have received $26,800 to develop evidence-based electronic tools for community pharmacists to detect and improve medication non-adherence. Drawing on their previous research in medication adherence measures, the team aims to develop five electronic tools to target four common chronic disease areas (type 2 diabetes, hypertension, asthma and depression).
“We are committed to building tools that have acceptability, usability, utility, implementation and ways to improve e-tools for supporting pharmacy practice,” says Guénette, noting that the initial focus will be on diabetes and depression. “By developing and providing new tools to better identify patients having adherence problems, we will engage and support pharmacists with their crucial role regarding …medication efficacy/safety."
University of Toronto’s Sara Guilcher and her team were also honoured with a 2016 Innovation Fund grant worth $38,000 to establish and evaluate the feasibility of an Acute care to Community Pharmacy Communication Link (ACC-Link) to improve medication management across transitions of care.
Building on existing best evidence around successful medication management interventions, the ACC-Link provides communication between hospital and community pharmacists to actively equip the latter with information needed to guide patients and their families at the point of hospital discharge. By evaluating the feasibility of the intervention and understanding the factors that may influence implementation, the researchers are expecting the program can be scaled to fit other clinical settings.
“Ultimately, ACC-Link has the potential to improve patients’ medication experiences, safety, overall health, and quality of life for themselves and their caregivers while reducing health-system costs and demand,” noted the research team in their submission.
Christine Hughes and her research team are working with the Alberta Pharmacists Association to examine the provision of patient services under the province's Pharmacy Services Framework.
Related link:
Sherilyn Houle is investigating the clinical effectiveness and patients' satisfaction with travel medicine services provided by pharmacists with independent prescribing authority.
Related link:
Working with a physician in a primary care setting, Tejal Patel is examining how pharmacist interventions can reduce polypharmacy and high-risk medication use among the frail elderly.
Related link:
The Evaluation of Pharmacist Prescribing for Minor Ailments - The Clinical and Economic Value
Now that pharmacists in some provinces can prescribe for minor ailments, what’s the impact on patients’ health? It’s a question that researchers in at the University Saskatchewan are keen to answer with a multiple-phase study, funded in part by the CFP.
Phase one in 2012-2013, funded by the provincial government, surveyed 125 pharmacy customers who’d been prescribed at least one medication for a minor ailment at one of 90 participating pharmacies. The study tracked the most common minor ailments treated and captured customers' perceptions of pharmacists. During phase two in 2015, researchers collected feedback about the process from pharmacists and physicians. Preliminary findings are mixed, with some resistance from some physicians. Researchers also returned to patients to capture their additional feedback. The final phase of the research, released in 2017, assessed and projected the economic impact of pharmacists prescribing for minor ailments.
Related articles:
Patient Perspectives on Symptom Severity (SelfCare 2016)
Minor Ailment Prescribing: Part 2 - Physician Feedback (SelfCare 2016)
Minor Ailment Prescribing: Part 1 - Pharmacist Feedback (SelfCare 2016)
Pharmacist-led minor ailment programs: a Canadian perspective (Int J Gen Med. 2016)
Evaluating pharmacist prescribing for minor ailments (Int J Pharm Pract. 2015)
2015 Changing Face of Pharmacy report (page 18)
2014 news article - Vote of confidence for minor ailments
Assessing need and benefits of home-based medication review services for non-homebound patients
Toronto-based community pharmacist John Papastergiou and his research team are assessing the benefits of providing home-based medication reviews to non-homebound patients. Currently, Ontario's MedsCheck for Home program reimburses pharmacists only for reviews conducted for homebound patients. Findings from previous research, however, as well as experiences with patients in the pharmacy, indicate that that there are medication-management issues that are best addressed in the home environment, whether or not the patient is homebound (for example, expired or discontinued medications). Senior patients taking five or more chronic medications are being recruited for the 12-month study, which reimburses participating pharmacists for their services to patients and for time spent documenting interventions.
Related article:
2017 news article - Home visits warranted for non-housebound
Pharmacists' Innovative Drug Therapy Management Outcomes, Resource use and Economics (PHInDMORE)
The Canadian Foundation for Pharmacy awarded a grant of $35,000 in support of PhInDMORE, a collaboration between Drs. Carlo Marra and Larry Lynd from the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of British Columbia, and pharmacist John Shaske of Howe Sound Pharmacy. Howe Sound is piloting the province's new PharmaNet system, and PHInDMORE is reviewing pharmacists' interventions and their impacts on patient outcomes, both clinical and economic. PharmaNet is a central database that allows for capture of real-world, real-time documentation of pharmacist-patient encounters to a level of comprehensiveness that has never before been possible. The research aims to demonstrate that there is potential for cost savings to the healthcare system when investing in pharmacists to practice to their full potential.
Related link:
Multi-partner smoking cessation project for vulnerable patient group
Pharmacists Manitoba partnered with Manitoba Health, Healthy Living and Seniors, the College of Pharmacists of Manitoba, Neighbourhood Pharmacy Association of Canada and researchers at the College of Pharmacy, University of Manitoba, to conduct a pilot project focused on helping low-income patient quit smoking. "We successfully reached out and worked with a very hard-to-reach population. Pharmacists proved that they are a key access point to a majority of the population, much more so than other healthcare providers," says Dr. Brenna Shearer, Chief Executive Officer of Pharmacists Manitoba.
In addition to $25,000 in funding from the Canadian Foundation for Pharmacy's Innovation Fund, this project was made possible through a matching grant from Pfizer Canada.
Related links:
2015 news article - MB smoking cessation helps vulnerable group
Safety Alerts as Drivers for Pharmaceutical Opinion Program: A Pilot Study to Reduce Potential Hospitalizations due to Preventable Drug-Drug Interactions
The Canadian Foundation for Pharmacy's Innovation Fund Grant of $50,000 supports a research project under the guidance of Principal Investigator Certina Ho, ISMP Canada and School of Pharmacy, University of Waterloo, to analyze and support the role of pharmacist to prevent medication errors, while generating new revenue streams via Ontario's funded Pharmaceutical Opinions program.
Related link:
2015 article in Pharmacy Practice+ - Safety alerts a win for patients, pharmacists, government
Pharmacists: Personalized Medicine Experts in Primary Care
Led by Lisa McCarthy (PharmD MSc), (Women’s College Hospital (WCH) and Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto), this multi-phase project will equip primary care pharmacists with the knowledge and skills required to take a lead role as personalized medicine experts in our health system and evaluate the impact on patients’ health outcomes.
Related links:
2016 article and video, www.CanadianHealthcareNetwork.ca
2016 news article: Personalized medicine in community practice
Impact of Community Pharmacist Interventions in Hypertension Management in Patient Outcomes: A Randomized Control Trial
Canadian Foundation for Pharmacy's $50,000 grant from its Innovation Fund supported ground-breaking research on the impact of regularly scheduled pharmacists' interventions with patients with uncontrolled hypertension in the working population. Pharmacists not only significantly helped improve blood pressure control, but were recognized as effective sources of support for changes in lifestyle behaviours. Green Shield Canada has since launched a pharmacists coaching program for cardiovascular health, available as a core benefit for its clients with drug plans.
Related links:
2015 news article - Insurer invests in CV coaching
2014 news article - Green Shield/OPA results promising for pharmacists
2014 final project report - Ontario Pharmacists Association & Green Shield Canada
SafetyNET-Rx: Development and Testing of Evaluation Guides
Neil McKinnon and his research team at Dalhousie University received $48,000 from the Canadian Foundation for Pharmacy's Innovation Fund to support SafetyNET-Rx, a standardized community pharmacy quality improvement program. Pharmacists and pharmacy assistants and technicians learn to identify and categorize specific medication errors and "near misses" (errors intercepted before a patient receives a prescription), then anonymously submit each error to a national database for subsequent analysis so pharmacy may implement practice changes to help prevent such errors from occurring again.
Related links:
2016 news article - SafetyNET-Rx has been a game changer
2014 news article - SK adopts SafetyNET-Rx for quality assurance
2010 news article - CFP announces 2010 Innovation Fund Grant winner
Dr. Barbara Farrell of the Bruyère Research Institute in Ottawa has been awarded $50,000 to support her research project on “Mobilizing Community Pharmacists as Catalysts for Deprescribing.” Based at the Institute, Farrell and her team will work with community pharmacy practices and a national advisory group (with provider and private payer representation) over a one-year period to develop acceptable workflow strategies for deprescribing guideline use.
Research associates will work with each pharmacy to quantify opportunities for deprescribing, describe activities and processes associated with guideline use—including how long such activities take—and highlight enablers and barriers that pharmacists encounter. This project is expected to lay the foundation for a larger demonstration project examining reach, adoption and implementation of deprescribing strategies, and ultimately a randomized controlled trial of deprescribing interventions that explores patient and health system outcomes, including related cost savings.
Dr. Line Guénette of the Faculty of Pharmacy at Laval University and her team have received $26,800 to develop evidence-based electronic tools for community pharmacists to detect and improve medication non-adherence. Drawing on their previous research in medication adherence measures, the team aims to develop five electronic tools to target four common chronic disease areas (type 2 diabetes, hypertension, asthma and depression).
“We are committed to building tools that have acceptability, usability, utility, implementation and ways to improve e-tools for supporting pharmacy practice,” says Guénette, noting that the initial focus will be on diabetes and depression. “By developing and providing new tools to better identify patients having adherence problems, we will engage and support pharmacists with their crucial role regarding …medication efficacy/safety."
University of Toronto’s Sara Guilcher and her team were also honoured with a 2016 Innovation Fund grant worth $38,000 to establish and evaluate the feasibility of an Acute care to Community Pharmacy Communication Link (ACC-Link) to improve medication management across transitions of care.
Building on existing best evidence around successful medication management interventions, the ACC-Link provides communication between hospital and community pharmacists to actively equip the latter with information needed to guide patients and their families at the point of hospital discharge. By evaluating the feasibility of the intervention and understanding the factors that may influence implementation, the researchers are expecting the program can be scaled to fit other clinical settings.
“Ultimately, ACC-Link has the potential to improve patients’ medication experiences, safety, overall health, and quality of life for themselves and their caregivers while reducing health-system costs and demand,” noted the research team in their submission.
Christine Hughes and her research team are working with the Alberta Pharmacists Association to examine the provision of patient services under the province's Pharmacy Services Framework.
Related link:
Sherilyn Houle is investigating the clinical effectiveness and patients' satisfaction with travel medicine services provided by pharmacists with independent prescribing authority.
Related link:
Working with a physician in a primary care setting, Tejal Patel is examining how pharmacist interventions can reduce polypharmacy and high-risk medication use among the frail elderly.
Related link:
The Evaluation of Pharmacist Prescribing for Minor Ailments - The Clinical and Economic Value
Now that pharmacists in some provinces can prescribe for minor ailments, what’s the impact on patients’ health? It’s a question that researchers in at the University Saskatchewan are keen to answer with a multiple-phase study, funded in part by the CFP.
Phase one in 2012-2013, funded by the provincial government, surveyed 125 pharmacy customers who’d been prescribed at least one medication for a minor ailment at one of 90 participating pharmacies. The study tracked the most common minor ailments treated and captured customers' perceptions of pharmacists. During phase two in 2015, researchers collected feedback about the process from pharmacists and physicians. Preliminary findings are mixed, with some resistance from some physicians. Researchers also returned to patients to capture their additional feedback. The final phase of the research, released in 2017, assessed and projected the economic impact of pharmacists prescribing for minor ailments.
Related articles:
Patient Perspectives on Symptom Severity (SelfCare 2016)
Minor Ailment Prescribing: Part 2 - Physician Feedback (SelfCare 2016)
Minor Ailment Prescribing: Part 1 - Pharmacist Feedback (SelfCare 2016)
Pharmacist-led minor ailment programs: a Canadian perspective (Int J Gen Med. 2016)
Evaluating pharmacist prescribing for minor ailments (Int J Pharm Pract. 2015)
2015 Changing Face of Pharmacy report (page 18)
2014 news article - Vote of confidence for minor ailments
Assessing need and benefits of home-based medication review services for non-homebound patients
Toronto-based community pharmacist John Papastergiou and his research team are assessing the benefits of providing home-based medication reviews to non-homebound patients. Currently, Ontario's MedsCheck for Home program reimburses pharmacists only for reviews conducted for homebound patients. Findings from previous research, however, as well as experiences with patients in the pharmacy, indicate that that there are medication-management issues that are best addressed in the home environment, whether or not the patient is homebound (for example, expired or discontinued medications). Senior patients taking five or more chronic medications are being recruited for the 12-month study, which reimburses participating pharmacists for their services to patients and for time spent documenting interventions.
Related article:
2017 news article - Home visits warranted for non-housebound
Pharmacists' Innovative Drug Therapy Management Outcomes, Resource use and Economics (PHInDMORE)
The Canadian Foundation for Pharmacy awarded a grant of $35,000 in support of PhInDMORE, a collaboration between Drs. Carlo Marra and Larry Lynd from the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of British Columbia, and pharmacist John Shaske of Howe Sound Pharmacy. Howe Sound is piloting the province's new PharmaNet system, and PHInDMORE is reviewing pharmacists' interventions and their impacts on patient outcomes, both clinical and economic. PharmaNet is a central database that allows for capture of real-world, real-time documentation of pharmacist-patient encounters to a level of comprehensiveness that has never before been possible. The research aims to demonstrate that there is potential for cost savings to the healthcare system when investing in pharmacists to practice to their full potential.
Related link:
Multi-partner smoking cessation project for vulnerable patient group
Pharmacists Manitoba partnered with Manitoba Health, Healthy Living and Seniors, the College of Pharmacists of Manitoba, Neighbourhood Pharmacy Association of Canada and researchers at the College of Pharmacy, University of Manitoba, to conduct a pilot project focused on helping low-income patient quit smoking. "We successfully reached out and worked with a very hard-to-reach population. Pharmacists proved that they are a key access point to a majority of the population, much more so than other healthcare providers," says Dr. Brenna Shearer, Chief Executive Officer of Pharmacists Manitoba.
In addition to $25,000 in funding from the Canadian Foundation for Pharmacy's Innovation Fund, this project was made possible through a matching grant from Pfizer Canada.
Related links:
2015 news article - MB smoking cessation helps vulnerable group
Safety Alerts as Drivers for Pharmaceutical Opinion Program: A Pilot Study to Reduce Potential Hospitalizations due to Preventable Drug-Drug Interactions
The Canadian Foundation for Pharmacy's Innovation Fund Grant of $50,000 supports a research project under the guidance of Principal Investigator Certina Ho, ISMP Canada and School of Pharmacy, University of Waterloo, to analyze and support the role of pharmacist to prevent medication errors, while generating new revenue streams via Ontario's funded Pharmaceutical Opinions program.
Related link:
2015 article in Pharmacy Practice+ - Safety alerts a win for patients, pharmacists, government
Pharmacists: Personalized Medicine Experts in Primary Care
Led by Lisa McCarthy (PharmD MSc), (Women’s College Hospital (WCH) and Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto), this multi-phase project will equip primary care pharmacists with the knowledge and skills required to take a lead role as personalized medicine experts in our health system and evaluate the impact on patients’ health outcomes.
Related links:
2016 article and video, www.CanadianHealthcareNetwork.ca
2016 news article: Personalized medicine in community practice
Impact of Community Pharmacist Interventions in Hypertension Management in Patient Outcomes: A Randomized Control Trial
Canadian Foundation for Pharmacy's $50,000 grant from its Innovation Fund supported ground-breaking research on the impact of regularly scheduled pharmacists' interventions with patients with uncontrolled hypertension in the working population. Pharmacists not only significantly helped improve blood pressure control, but were recognized as effective sources of support for changes in lifestyle behaviours. Green Shield Canada has since launched a pharmacists coaching program for cardiovascular health, available as a core benefit for its clients with drug plans.
Related links:
2015 news article - Insurer invests in CV coaching
2014 news article - Green Shield/OPA results promising for pharmacists
2014 final project report - Ontario Pharmacists Association & Green Shield Canada
SafetyNET-Rx: Development and Testing of Evaluation Guides
Neil McKinnon and his research team at Dalhousie University received $48,000 from the Canadian Foundation for Pharmacy's Innovation Fund to support SafetyNET-Rx, a standardized community pharmacy quality improvement program. Pharmacists and pharmacy assistants and technicians learn to identify and categorize specific medication errors and "near misses" (errors intercepted before a patient receives a prescription), then anonymously submit each error to a national database for subsequent analysis so pharmacy may implement practice changes to help prevent such errors from occurring again.
Related links:
2016 news article - SafetyNET-Rx has been a game changer
2014 news article - SK adopts SafetyNET-Rx for quality assurance
2010 news article - CFP announces 2010 Innovation Fund Grant winner
How have Pharmacists in Different Practice Settings integrated Prescribing into Practice in Alberta?
The Canadian Foundation for Pharmacy and Alberta College of Pharmacists are funding a three-stage research project on pharmacists' prescribing behaviours. Stage one, conducted in 2013, was a qualitative exploration based on interviews with small cohorts of pharmacists in Alberta and Ontario who prescribe at least weekly. It found that pharmacists in all practice settings were prescribing in product-, disease- and patient-focused ways. Many also focused their prescribing in a clinical area, such as anticoagulation, hypertension and diabetes. Stage two, currently under development, will draw from the findings of stage one to survey a great number of pharmacists. Stage three, a mixed-methods survey, will continue to build upon the findings from the previous stages, focusing on pharmacists in Alberta.
Related links:
2011 article in Canadian Pharmacists Journal - Study Design and Rationale
Dr. Barbara Farrell of the Bruyère Research Institute in Ottawa has been awarded $50,000 to support her research project on “Mobilizing Community Pharmacists as Catalysts for Deprescribing.” Based at the Institute, Farrell and her team will work with community pharmacy practices and a national advisory group (with provider and private payer representation) over a one-year period to develop acceptable workflow strategies for deprescribing guideline use.
Research associates will work with each pharmacy to quantify opportunities for deprescribing, describe activities and processes associated with guideline use—including how long such activities take—and highlight enablers and barriers that pharmacists encounter. This project is expected to lay the foundation for a larger demonstration project examining reach, adoption and implementation of deprescribing strategies, and ultimately a randomized controlled trial of deprescribing interventions that explores patient and health system outcomes, including related cost savings.
Dr. Line Guénette of the Faculty of Pharmacy at Laval University and her team have received $26,800 to develop evidence-based electronic tools for community pharmacists to detect and improve medication non-adherence. Drawing on their previous research in medication adherence measures, the team aims to develop five electronic tools to target four common chronic disease areas (type 2 diabetes, hypertension, asthma and depression).
“We are committed to building tools that have acceptability, usability, utility, implementation and ways to improve e-tools for supporting pharmacy practice,” says Guénette, noting that the initial focus will be on diabetes and depression. “By developing and providing new tools to better identify patients having adherence problems, we will engage and support pharmacists with their crucial role regarding …medication efficacy/safety."
University of Toronto’s Sara Guilcher and her team were also honoured with a 2016 Innovation Fund grant worth $38,000 to establish and evaluate the feasibility of an Acute care to Community Pharmacy Communication Link (ACC-Link) to improve medication management across transitions of care.
Building on existing best evidence around successful medication management interventions, the ACC-Link provides communication between hospital and community pharmacists to actively equip the latter with information needed to guide patients and their families at the point of hospital discharge. By evaluating the feasibility of the intervention and understanding the factors that may influence implementation, the researchers are expecting the program can be scaled to fit other clinical settings.
“Ultimately, ACC-Link has the potential to improve patients’ medication experiences, safety, overall health, and quality of life for themselves and their caregivers while reducing health-system costs and demand,” noted the research team in their submission.
Christine Hughes and her research team are working with the Alberta Pharmacists Association to examine the provision of patient services under the province's Pharmacy Services Framework.
Related link:
Sherilyn Houle is investigating the clinical effectiveness and patients' satisfaction with travel medicine services provided by pharmacists with independent prescribing authority.
Related link:
Working with a physician in a primary care setting, Tejal Patel is examining how pharmacist interventions can reduce polypharmacy and high-risk medication use among the frail elderly.
Related link:
The Evaluation of Pharmacist Prescribing for Minor Ailments - The Clinical and Economic Value
Now that pharmacists in some provinces can prescribe for minor ailments, what’s the impact on patients’ health? It’s a question that researchers in at the University Saskatchewan are keen to answer with a multiple-phase study, funded in part by the CFP.
Phase one in 2012-2013, funded by the provincial government, surveyed 125 pharmacy customers who’d been prescribed at least one medication for a minor ailment at one of 90 participating pharmacies. The study tracked the most common minor ailments treated and captured customers' perceptions of pharmacists. During phase two in 2015, researchers collected feedback about the process from pharmacists and physicians. Preliminary findings are mixed, with some resistance from some physicians. Researchers also returned to patients to capture their additional feedback. The final phase of the research, released in 2017, assessed and projected the economic impact of pharmacists prescribing for minor ailments.
Related articles:
Patient Perspectives on Symptom Severity (SelfCare 2016)
Minor Ailment Prescribing: Part 2 - Physician Feedback (SelfCare 2016)
Minor Ailment Prescribing: Part 1 - Pharmacist Feedback (SelfCare 2016)
Pharmacist-led minor ailment programs: a Canadian perspective (Int J Gen Med. 2016)
Evaluating pharmacist prescribing for minor ailments (Int J Pharm Pract. 2015)
2015 Changing Face of Pharmacy report (page 18)
2014 news article - Vote of confidence for minor ailments
Assessing need and benefits of home-based medication review services for non-homebound patients
Toronto-based community pharmacist John Papastergiou and his research team are assessing the benefits of providing home-based medication reviews to non-homebound patients. Currently, Ontario's MedsCheck for Home program reimburses pharmacists only for reviews conducted for homebound patients. Findings from previous research, however, as well as experiences with patients in the pharmacy, indicate that that there are medication-management issues that are best addressed in the home environment, whether or not the patient is homebound (for example, expired or discontinued medications). Senior patients taking five or more chronic medications are being recruited for the 12-month study, which reimburses participating pharmacists for their services to patients and for time spent documenting interventions.
Related article:
2017 news article - Home visits warranted for non-housebound
Pharmacists' Innovative Drug Therapy Management Outcomes, Resource use and Economics (PHInDMORE)
The Canadian Foundation for Pharmacy awarded a grant of $35,000 in support of PhInDMORE, a collaboration between Drs. Carlo Marra and Larry Lynd from the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of British Columbia, and pharmacist John Shaske of Howe Sound Pharmacy. Howe Sound is piloting the province's new PharmaNet system, and PHInDMORE is reviewing pharmacists' interventions and their impacts on patient outcomes, both clinical and economic. PharmaNet is a central database that allows for capture of real-world, real-time documentation of pharmacist-patient encounters to a level of comprehensiveness that has never before been possible. The research aims to demonstrate that there is potential for cost savings to the healthcare system when investing in pharmacists to practice to their full potential.
Related link:
Multi-partner smoking cessation project for vulnerable patient group
Pharmacists Manitoba partnered with Manitoba Health, Healthy Living and Seniors, the College of Pharmacists of Manitoba, Neighbourhood Pharmacy Association of Canada and researchers at the College of Pharmacy, University of Manitoba, to conduct a pilot project focused on helping low-income patient quit smoking. "We successfully reached out and worked with a very hard-to-reach population. Pharmacists proved that they are a key access point to a majority of the population, much more so than other healthcare providers," says Dr. Brenna Shearer, Chief Executive Officer of Pharmacists Manitoba.
In addition to $25,000 in funding from the Canadian Foundation for Pharmacy's Innovation Fund, this project was made possible through a matching grant from Pfizer Canada.
Related links:
2015 news article - MB smoking cessation helps vulnerable group
Safety Alerts as Drivers for Pharmaceutical Opinion Program: A Pilot Study to Reduce Potential Hospitalizations due to Preventable Drug-Drug Interactions
The Canadian Foundation for Pharmacy's Innovation Fund Grant of $50,000 supports a research project under the guidance of Principal Investigator Certina Ho, ISMP Canada and School of Pharmacy, University of Waterloo, to analyze and support the role of pharmacist to prevent medication errors, while generating new revenue streams via Ontario's funded Pharmaceutical Opinions program.
Related link:
2015 article in Pharmacy Practice+ - Safety alerts a win for patients, pharmacists, government
Pharmacists: Personalized Medicine Experts in Primary Care
Led by Lisa McCarthy (PharmD MSc), (Women’s College Hospital (WCH) and Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto), this multi-phase project will equip primary care pharmacists with the knowledge and skills required to take a lead role as personalized medicine experts in our health system and evaluate the impact on patients’ health outcomes.
Related links:
2016 article and video, www.CanadianHealthcareNetwork.ca
2016 news article: Personalized medicine in community practice
Impact of Community Pharmacist Interventions in Hypertension Management in Patient Outcomes: A Randomized Control Trial
Canadian Foundation for Pharmacy's $50,000 grant from its Innovation Fund supported ground-breaking research on the impact of regularly scheduled pharmacists' interventions with patients with uncontrolled hypertension in the working population. Pharmacists not only significantly helped improve blood pressure control, but were recognized as effective sources of support for changes in lifestyle behaviours. Green Shield Canada has since launched a pharmacists coaching program for cardiovascular health, available as a core benefit for its clients with drug plans.
Related links:
2015 news article - Insurer invests in CV coaching
2014 news article - Green Shield/OPA results promising for pharmacists
2014 final project report - Ontario Pharmacists Association & Green Shield Canada
SafetyNET-Rx: Development and Testing of Evaluation Guides
Neil McKinnon and his research team at Dalhousie University received $48,000 from the Canadian Foundation for Pharmacy's Innovation Fund to support SafetyNET-Rx, a standardized community pharmacy quality improvement program. Pharmacists and pharmacy assistants and technicians learn to identify and categorize specific medication errors and "near misses" (errors intercepted before a patient receives a prescription), then anonymously submit each error to a national database for subsequent analysis so pharmacy may implement practice changes to help prevent such errors from occurring again.
Related links:
2016 news article - SafetyNET-Rx has been a game changer
2014 news article - SK adopts SafetyNET-Rx for quality assurance
2010 news article - CFP announces 2010 Innovation Fund Grant winner
How have Pharmacists in Different Practice Settings integrated Prescribing into Practice in Alberta?
The Canadian Foundation for Pharmacy and Alberta College of Pharmacists are funding a three-stage research project on pharmacists' prescribing behaviours. Stage one, conducted in 2013, was a qualitative exploration based on interviews with small cohorts of pharmacists in Alberta and Ontario who prescribe at least weekly. It found that pharmacists in all practice settings were prescribing in product-, disease- and patient-focused ways. Many also focused their prescribing in a clinical area, such as anticoagulation, hypertension and diabetes. Stage two, currently under development, will draw from the findings of stage one to survey a great number of pharmacists. Stage three, a mixed-methods survey, will continue to build upon the findings from the previous stages, focusing on pharmacists in Alberta.
Related links:
2011 article in Canadian Pharmacists Journal - Study Design and Rationale
In 2007 Dr. Ross Tsuyuki, Director of the EPICORE Centre, University of Alberta, received financial support from the Innovation Fund for the following series of studies on the implementation of chronic disease management services in community pharmacies:
In 2008 Dr. Tsuyuki received additional funding for research focussing on hypertension management, detailed in the following published articles:
Related articles:
2016 news article - "Stunning" results from hypertension study
