The Effect of Medication Reviews in a Rural Community Pharmacy Assistance Program: The Cenla Medication Access Program

The purpose of this article is to determine the effect of medication reviews on patient understanding of and compliance to medications for participants in the Cenla Medication Access Program (CMAP). A sample of 844 individuals with a total of 2013 reviews over a period of 6 months to 1 year produced 5 outcome variables: the percentage of the total number of drugs the patient understands the purpose of (PURPOSE), understands the proper use of (USE), and is compliant with (COMPLIANCE) and the percentage of patients that experienced any drug-drug or drug-disease interactions (INTERACTION) or any adverse reactions (REACTION). Mixed-effects models and generalized estimating equations were used to assess change in PURPOSE, USE, COMPLIANCE, INTERACTION, and REACTION over time. All effects were adjusted for differences in age, race, gender, the number of years of education, total number of medications per patient, and the patient's primary diagnosis. Significant increases were observed for PURPOSE, USE, and COMPLIANCE. A significant decrease was observed for INTERACTION. No significant difference in REACTION was observed over time. CMAP has seen increases in patient understanding and compliance, as well as a decrease in drug-drug and drug-disease interactions through the first year of medication reviews.