Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey-hosted Training Gives Hospital Pharmacy Staff, Care-givers “Best in Class” Protocols on Medicine Management

On Oct 14, 2016

Understanding a patient’s full history with prescription drugs, including what they have taken, how drug interactions have affected them, medication adherence and drug literacy, was the focus of a recent all-day training session hosted last week by Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey (Horizon BCBSNJ).  Attended by hospital pharmacy officers, nurses, pharmacists, care coordinators, pharmacy technicians and Rutgers University Pharmacy School faculty, the intensive training spotlighted the importance of medication management and reconciliation in achieving high quality patient care outcomes when patients transition to and from a hospital-based setting.

“Whether for voluntary procedures or emergency circumstances, treatment in a hospital is typically part of a patient’s health care journey,” said Allen Karp, senior vice president, Healthcare Management for Horizon BCBSNJ. “Horizon is committed to ensuring that when our members are hospitalized, care-givers have a full and accurate representation of their history with medications so they can be treated safely and effectively during their stay,” he said.  Peer-reviewed studies show that nearly two-thirds of inpatients have at least one unexplained discrepancy in their admission medication history.

Held at Horizon BCBSNJ’s Newark headquarters, more than 75 professionals participated in the Multicenter Medication Reconciliation Quality Improvement Study (MARQUIS) training session. The workshop focused on training hospital staff to take a “Best Possible Medication History” (BPMH) approach to a patient’s medication profile, with the goal of avoiding unintentional adverse events that lead to hospital readmissions. The program, considered nationally as a best in class tool kit, is a train-the-trainer model so key skills taught during the workshop can be taught to others locally to train them to take a BPMH and certify their competency. The program was led by Jeffrey L. Schnipper, MD, MPH, FHM, MARQUIS Principal Investigator and hospitalist at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston, and his team.

“This program took our organization from a pilot program and gave us the roadmap for success as an enterprise program with greater depth and accuracy,” RWJ Barnabas Health’s Chief Pharmacy Officer, Robert Adamson.

“The MARQUIS training provides our transition of care pharmacists and technicians the tools they need to make specific interventions and implement best practices that are focused around increasing patient safety and reducing overall costs,” said Nilesh Desai, administrator, Pharmacy and Clinical Services for Hackensack University Medical Center.

“MARQUIS training has provided the initial blueprints and tools to design, build and implement pharmacy-based medication reconciliation programs in the acute-care hospital setting,” said Ed Dix, Pharmacy Director of Inspira Medical Center Woodbury, Inspira Health Network.

“Horizon is committed to being partners in care with our hospitals so that together we can achieve the highest standards of quality in all components of our members care,” said Saira A Jan, M.S., Pharm.D., Director of Pharmacy Strategy and Clinical Integration at Horizon BCBS and Clinical Professor at Rutgers State University of New Jersey “This training program provided the tools our hospitals need to fully understand and reconcile their patients’ medication history and to fully leverage this knowledge to the benefit of the patient,” she said.

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