Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Apr 5, 2022
Date Accepted: Nov 28, 2022
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
eConsults to improve access to the hospital pharmacist: A retrospective cross-sectional descriptive study of five years of experience
ABSTRACT
Background:
Patients often have questions about their medication. When medication is started during hospital admission or an outpatient visit, community pharmacists are not always informed enough to answer these questions. Therefore direct contact with hospital pharmacists may be more appropriate and efficient. This contact is facilitated through the eConsult function in the Hospitals Patient Portal.
Objective:
This study is aimed to evaluate the prevalence and contents of the eConsults sent by patients to hospital pharmacists.
Methods:
A retrospective cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted at the Leiden university medical center in the Netherlands (the LUMC). Patients who sent at least one eConsult to a hospital pharmacist between March 2017 and December 2021 were included. Patient characteristics and the number of medications used were extracted from medical records. Furthermore, time of sending and the subject of the eConsults were analyzed. Finally, the appropriateness for evaluation by the hospital pharmacist was assessed of all eConsults.
Results:
During the study period 983 eConsults (involving 808 patients) were sent by patients to the hospital pharmacist. The average age of the patients was 56 years (sd=15.9) and 415 patients (51.4%) were male. 386 patients (47.8%) used 0 to 5 medications; 267 (33.0%) used 5 to 10 medications and 155 (19.2%) used ≥ 10 medications. Of the eConsults, 107/983 (10.9%) were excluded due to not being medication-related or not intended for the hospital pharmacist. Patients under treatment by 31 different medical specialties sent eConsults to the hospital pharmacist. The most common medical specialty was cardiology with 197 eConsults (22.5%). Most eConsults were sent during office hours (n= 614, 70.2%). eConsults concerned: Medication verification (n= 372, 42.5%), logistics (n= 243, 27.7%), therapeutic effect and adverse events (n= 100, 11.4%), use of medication (n= 87, 9.9%) and other subjects (n= 74, 8.4%).
Conclusions:
Introducing eConsults facilitates patients to ask medication-related questions to hospital pharmacists directly. In this way, using the Hospital’s Patient Portal, electronic communication can improve medical care and patient health. Practice implications Introducing eConsults can offer a promising tool to improve access to the hospital pharmacist. Clinical Trial: -
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