ABS71: An evaluation of a community pharmacy based rural asthma management service

Abstract

Introduction:

Community pharmacies present an underutilised but reliable primary care setting for the delivery of specialised asthma care programs, especially in disadvantaged rural and remote Australian settings.

Aims and objectives:

To design, implement and evaluate a community pharmacy model for the provision of asthma care in rural NSW.

Method:

A parallel group controlled study was conducted in two separate but demographically similar areas. The intervention pharmacists were trained to deliver the Rural Asthma Management Service (RAMS) model, whilst control pharmacists provided usual asthma care to their recruited patients. Patients in both groups were followed across six months and outcomes compared between baseline and six months.

Results:

Fifty one and thirty nine patients were recruited by intervention (n = 12) and control pharmacists (n = 8) respectively. At baseline there were no significant differences in asthma related characteristics between the groups. Results compared at baseline and final visit in the intervention group included: a reduction in the asthma severity scores from 11.4∓2.9 to 7.9∓2.6 (n = 46, p <0.001); an improvement in peak flow indices from 75.4%∓13.6% to 85.6%∓16.4% (n =47, p < 0.001); a reduction in the risk of non-adherence scores from 3.0 ∓1.1 to 1.6∓ 0.7 (n = 48, p < 0.001,); an increase in the confidence of managing an asthma attack score from 2.5∓ 1.2 to 1.7∓ 1.0 (n = 48, p = 0.04). There were no significant differences in the asthma severity, risk of non adherence or confidence scores between the baseline and final visits in the control group (p > 0.05).

Conclusions:

These results indicated that the RAMS model has the potential to improve patient outcomes for asthma in rural communities and should be tested further.

Conflict of interest and funding

Funding- The Pharmacy Guild of Australia is acknowledged for providing funding.