Community Pharmacy–Based Pharmaceutical Care for Asthma Patients

BACKGROUNDDespite significant progress in asthma drug therapy in recent years, there has been no major change in asthma morbidity and mortality. It is still important to determine whether pharmaceutical care (PC) influences health outcomes.OBJECTIVETo evaluate the effectiveness of PC with regard to clinical, humanistic, and economic outcomes in adults with asthma.METHODSAn intervention study was conducted over 12 months. At baseline, 39 community/retail pharmacies, 84 primary care physicians (general practitioners, internal specialists, chest physicians), and 183 patients (aged 18–65 y) diagnosed with asthma were included. To evaluate economic outcomes, 2 German statutory health insurance funds provided 2 years of claims data for their insured patients (n = 55). A 1:10 matching was carried out to compare the data of this intervention subgroup with those of a control group (n = 550).RESULTSSignificant improvements were found for all humanistic outcomes (eg, asthma-specific quality of life, self-efficacy, k...