Telephone Counseling for Tobacco Cessation

While physician-delivered care may have the greatest impact on tobacco abstinence rates, recent data indicate that other health care providers such as nurses and pharmacists improve tobacco abstinence rates more than self-help and/or no intervention.5 Thus, pharmacists continue to expand their clinical practice areas to include smoking cessation interventions. A meta-analysis of studies involving pharmacist-delivered smoking cessation services found quit rates at 6 to12 months follow-up ranged from 14% to16%.6 The results of this meta-analysis demonstrate that pharmacists can successfully deliver tobacco-cessation interventions and the evidence strongly suggests they are effective in helping increase tobacco cessation rates. Proactive telephone counseling can be more effective at increasing tobacco abstinence rates than self-help or no intervention.5 Telephone counseling is an effective system to help increase tobacco abstinence rates for a variety of reasons. From the tobacco user's standpoint, there are no transportation inconveniences and fewer scheduling conflicts. In addition, receiving counseling in the privacy of one's own home provides treatment access to individuals who are less willing to seek out counseling. At Kaiser Permanente Colorado (KPCO), members with a history of CVD are enrolled in the Clinical Pharmacy Cardiac Risk Service (CPCRS). The CPCRS is a clinical pharmacy specialist-managed, physician-directed program which provides secondary prevention care to over 14,000 patients. Clinical care includes evaluating and treatment of major cardiovascular risk factors, including tobacco use, for members. Currently, CPCRS has no standard of care with regard to addressing tobacco use. Clinical pharmacy specialists working in CPCRS deliver tobacco cessation advice at their own discretion, through various methods. The purpose of this pilot study is to determine whether brief, structured, telephone tobacco cessation counseling delivered by a clinical pharmacy specialist increases the number of smoking cessation attempts compared to usual care.