Evaluation of the Impact of a Collaboration Between Hospital and Community Pharmacists at Hospital Discharge

April 13, 2026 updated by: Pharmacie des Hopitaux de l'Est Lemanique

Enhanced Collaboration Between Hospital and Community Pharmacists to Improve the Hospital Discharge Process

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

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

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

Study Overview

Status

Recruiting

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Estimated)

150

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Contact

Study Contact Backup

Study Locations

  • Switzerland
    • Canton of Vaud
      • Rennaz, Canton of Vaud, Switzerland, 1847
        • Recruiting
        • Hôpital Riviera-Chablais, Vaud-Valais
        • Contact:
        • Principal Investigator:
          • Paul Garin, PharmD

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

  • Adult
  • Older Adult

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

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

Exclusion Criteria:

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

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Supportive Care
  • Allocation: Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
No Intervention: Control arm
Participants in the control arm will benefit from the usual standard of care currently provided in routine clinical practice. Physicians performs medication reconciliation on their own and hand-out the prescription to the patient the day of discharge. The patient then goes to the pharmacy for a classical drug dispensation.
Experimental: Intervention arm
Participants in the intervention group will benefit from the hospital pharmacist's support to optimize medication management and ensure a safe and effective discharge process.
Other: Support of the hospital pharmacist for the medication management at hospital discharge
1) The hospital pharmacist calls the community pharmacy the day before discharge to order unusual or specific medications 2) The day of discharge, the hospital pharmacist performs a medication reconciliation in collaboration with the hospital physician 3) Once completed, the discharge prescription is sent to the community pharmacy before the patient is discharged. 4) The hospital pharmacist calls the community pharmacy to provide additional information about the patient and the prescription and to answer any questions. Additional information will help the community pharmacist to understand the prescription : administrative data, clinical data, medication-related information, patient follow-up and patient concerns.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Number of drug-related problems on the hospital discharge prescription
Time Frame: 7 days after hospital discharge
Community pharmacists will assess the number of drug-related problems (DRP) on the discharge that they faced when preparing the discharge medication. They will have to use the PharmDISC system, which is a validated tool for referencing drug-related problems faced in the community which was adapted from the drug-related problems classification system of the Pharmaceutical Care Network Europe (PCNE). Community pharmacists will also document the intervention performed for each DRP, and the resolution (yes/no) of the DRP.
7 days after hospital discharge

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Patient's satisfaction
Time Frame: 7 days after hospital discharge
Patients' satisfaction related to their visit at the pharmacy after hospital discharge will be assessed using a questionnaire. Patients will be contacted via email or telephone
7 days after hospital discharge
Community pharmacists' satisfaction
Time Frame: Through study completion, approximately 6 months
The satisfaction of community pharmacists with the service provided by the hospital pharmacist at patient discharge will be evaluated
Through study completion, approximately 6 months
30 day readmission rate
Time Frame: 30 days after hospital discharge
Number of participants with hospital emergency department visits and hospital readmission in the same hospital within 30 days of discharge
30 days after hospital discharge

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Pharmacie des Hopitaux de l'Est Lemanique

Investigators

  • Study Director: Anne-Laure Blanc, PharmD, PhD, Pharmacie des Hôpitaux de l'Est Lémanique

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Actual)

September 1, 2025

Primary Completion (Estimated)

September 1, 2026

Study Completion (Estimated)

October 1, 2026

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

March 11, 2025

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

March 24, 2025

First Posted (Actual)

March 30, 2025

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

April 16, 2026

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

April 13, 2026

Last Verified

April 1, 2026

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Other Study ID Numbers

  • ECHOPHARM

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

YES

IPD Plan Description

Data to be shared includes demographic and study outcomes, with a data summary Data will be anonymized and shared in a secure format (CSV)

IPD Sharing Time Frame

IPD data will be available 6 months after publication of the first study results and for 10 years

IPD Sharing Access Criteria

Data will be accessible to external researchers, regulatory bodies, and authorized entities under the following conditions:

Formal request submission detailing the project and data usage. Access granted if the request meets ethical, scientific, and confidentiality criteria.

IPD Sharing Supporting Information Type

  • STUDY_PROTOCOL
  • SAP
  • ICF
  • ANALYTIC_CODE
  • CSR

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

product manufactured in and exported from the U.S.

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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