Pharmacy Asthma Care Program: Final report January 2006

The Pharmacy Asthma Care Program (PACP) was designed to identify people who may be at risk of poorly controlled asthma and then offer them a specialised service based on the Six-step Asthma Management Plan. A randomised controlled repeated measures design was used to assess the impact of the pharmacist delivered service on asthma control over a 6 month period. The PACP service involved an ongoing cycle of assessment, goal setting, monitoring and review. Over a series of three or four visits, PACP intervention pharmacists assessed patients’ asthma severity, conducted spirometry, reviewed inhaler technique and educated patients on the condition and their medications. Pharmacists also assessed patients’ adherence to medications, encouraged patients to set goals and referred patients to their physician when appropriate. In the control group pharmacists assessed severity and conducted spirometry at baseline and then offered their normal service over six months at which time severity and spirometry were reassessed.
Pharmacists were recruited for the study from a list of accredited QCPP pharmacies in 3 states (2 sites in NSW, 1 site in QLD, 1 site in VIC) and were randomly allocated to the Intervention or Control group. Each pharmacy was asked to recruit 10 patients based on a risk assessment for poorly controlled asthma. A total of 186 Control and165 Intervention patients completed the study (a completion rate of 88.6%).