Samford University’s McWhorter School of Pharmacy in Birmingham, will receive an $865,568 federal grant to assist with an initiative to reduce avoidable hospitalizations among Medicare-Medicaid dual enrollees in 23 Alabama nursing home facilities.
The grant from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is part of a program led by the Alabama Quality Assurance Foundation (AQAF).
The Samford pharmacy school and nine other healthcare-related partners will provide enhanced onsite services and support to nursing facility residents. The nursing homes are located in 14 counties in central and north central Alabama.
Pharmacists at Samford’s Global Drug Information Service (GDIS) will provide evidence-based decision support for healthcare providers and educate healthcare professionals regarding the rational use of medications, said GDIS director Maisha Kelly Freeman.
“The pharmacists will implement quality improvement projects to reduce the risk of adverse events and avoidable hospitalizations related to use of high-risk medications,” Freeman said.
The initiative will be run collaboratively by the CMS Medicare-Medicaid Coordination Office and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, both created by the Affordable Care Act to improve healthcare quality and reduce costs in the Medicare-Medicaid programs.
Nearly two-thirds of nursing facility residents are enrolled in Medicaid, and most also are enrolled in Medicare. Research has found that about 45 percent of hospitalizations among Medicare-Medicaid enrollees could have been avoided. Total costs for these potentially avoidable hospitalizations were estimated to be 7–8 billion dollars for 2011.
AQAF received a total $15.2 million in grant money from CMS for the project.
(Samford)
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