APPE students lead successful transitions of care program

Fourth-year SPPS students provided telephone-based counseling to patients recently discharged with a cardiovascular-related diagnosis, focusing on medication counseling and encouragement of a physician follow-up visit.

“We try very hard to work with clinical partners to create learning experiences where students are viewed as ‘assets,’” says Nicholas Fusco, PharmD '10, clinical associate professor, pharmacy practice, and interim direction, experiential education. “This is a perfect example of how that can be achieved.”

More than 1,200 student-patient encounters took place. At the conclusion of the study, it was determined that patients who used the TOC program were 67% less likely to be readmitted to the hospital 30 days after discharge for all-causes and 62% less likely to be readmitted for causes related to their initial hospital visit.

The findings were published in the March-April 2019 issue of the Journal of the American Pharmacists Association.

Preceptor Melissa Morano, PharmD ‘13, directly attributes the success of the program to the students. “This program has been initiated, conducted, tweaked and perfected all by our SPPS APPE students,” she says. “We were able to run a successful transitions of care program, which demonstrated decreased readmission rates."

Additional UB School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences alumni that participated in the study were Amy Shaver, MPH ’17/PharmD '18, Jill Pogodzinski, BS '99, Stacy Fredrick, PharmD '18, David Essi, PharmD '18, and Erin Slazak, PharmD '04, clinical assistant professor, pharmacy practice.