Impact of Pharmacist Post-discharge Phone Calls on Hospital Readmission and Patient Medication Literacy and Adherence

A significant portion of avoidable healthcare expenditures has been attributed to preventable hospital readmissions; thus, reducing hospital readmission rates has become a national healthcare agenda item. Despite much study of this topic, efforts to date have not been especially fruitful in either predicting which patients will require hospital readmission. Preventing readmissions has been even more difficult.

We recently examined a pharmacist intervention that assessed patients' medication literacy and adherence at hospital admission. In this retrospective data, low medication adherence levels were predictive of hospital readmission. There was a non-significant trend between low medication literacy and increased hospital readmissions.

We have now decided to prospectively study this intervention. Prospective study will allow for several improvements on our prior work.

1. We have consulted the literature to more carefully examine existing instruments to measure medication adherence and literacy. Based on this review, and based on our prior results, we have made adjustments to these instruments which should improve reliability, validity, and granularity.
2. In our retrospective work, our intervention of pharmacist counseling was not randomized. Although there were large differences in readmission rates between the patients selected to receive counseling and those who were not thought to require it, there may have been unmeasured confounding variables. Randomizing this intervention will greatly enhance the likelihood that we are comparing two similar groups of patients.