The Impact of Clinical Pharmacist Integration on a Collaborative Interdisciplinary Diabetes Management Team

Objective: The national initiative, Project IMProving America’s Communities Together (IMPACT): Diabetes, was intended to scale a proven American Pharmacists Association (APhA) Foundation process model, which integrates pharmacists on the collaborative health-care team, in communities greatly affected by diabetes to improve key indicators of diabetes. This article discusses the results from 1 community in Mississippi. Methods: This national prospective study followed patients with a hemoglobin A 1c (HbA 1c ) >7% from September 2011 to January 2013. Pharmacists collaborated with providers and other health-care professionals to provide medication therapy management services for a minimum of 3 visits. Outcome measures included HbA 1c , systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP and DBP), fasting cholesterol panel, body mass index (BMI), influenza vaccine and smoking status, and foot and eye examination dates. Results: At this site, there were statistically significant outcomes including mean HbA 1c decrease of 1.2% in SBP and DBP of 8.3 mm Hg and 3.5 mm Hg, respectively, and reduction in low-density lipoprotein of 16.6 mg/dL, all of which were greater improvements compared to overall results from combined sites. Conclusion: Patients in this community who received care from the collaborative team, including a pharmacist, had improvement in most key indicators of diabetes, with a clinically significant reduction in HbA 1c .