As most of us know, current regulations require hospices to cover the cost of all palliative medications, as well as medications related to patients’ primary diagnosis. The medications necessary to manage some diagnoses can be significantly more costly than others (for example, COPD patients can be very expensive since most inhalers are brand only, costing up to $300 each). Without getting into a diagnosis-specific discussion, there are some general strategies to consider when finalizing medication regimens.
The first step is to do a thorough medication profile review at the time of admission to identify issues such as medication duplications, drug interactions, cost, and medication appropriateness. Our Pharmacists are trained to be extremely effective at these reviews and advising hospices on all these matters. At Dr. Ike’s Pharmacare we provide this service routinely for all hospice patients. We base the review on patient’s primary diagnosis and recommend changes to therapy, which then gets reviewed and finalized by the hospice doctor.
