Overview of the Patient Safety and Clinical Pharmacy Services Collaborative (printable)

Committed to saving and enhancing thousands of lives a year by achieving optimal health outcomes and eliminating adverse drug events through increased clinical pharmacy services for the patients we serve.

The Patient Safety & Clinical Pharmacy Services Collaborative (PSPC) is

• A breakthrough effort to improve the quality of health care across America by integrating evidence-based clinical pharmacy services into the care and management of patients with chronic diseases.
  
  
• An action learning system to rapidly improve patient outcomes and patient safety.
  
  
• A collaboration among 68 teams of HRSA-funded providers and their community-based safety-net partners who serve large numbers of patients with multiple chronic conditions such as diabetes, obesity, and hypertension. Using this method adopted from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, evidence-based practices are spread to providers.

Patients and Outcomes

Lack of coordinated care across healthcare providers – primary care physicians, specialists, pharmacies, and emergency departments – can compromise the safety and quality of care For patients with multiple chronic disease conditions taking multiple prescriptions.

Adverse drug events continue to be a leading cause of death and injury in the U.S., even though there are well-documented methods to prevent them.

The Patient Safety and Clinical Pharmacy Services Collaborative (PSPC) uses a fast paced, iterative improvement method that supports teams of health care providers in testing and spreading leading practices that significantly improve health outcomes and patient safety by integrating clinical pharmacy services.

Through an intensive series of Learning Sessions and Action Periods, PSPC teams learn the leading practices from expert national faculty and, as teams progress, from each other.

During the Action Periods between each Learning Session, PSPC teams test, refine, adapt and implement changes.

A national dashboard will help teams track monthly progress on multiple improvement measures, which include health outcome measures, clinical pharmacy services, and adverse drug events.