Should pharmacists join the team that looks after people with osteoarthritis?

Including pharmacists in the team that cares for people with knee osteoarthritis can lead to better outcomes for the individual, says a study published in Arthritis Care & Research.
Experts in Canada wanted to establish if an approach that involved pharmacists working alongside others in the healthcare system could provide value for money compared to usual care in people newly diagnosed with knee osteoarthritis.
So pharmacies were randomly allocated to provide usual care and a leaflet or an interventional care approach comprising:

• Pain medication management by a pharmacist
• Education
• Physiotherapy-guided exercise
• Communication with the primary care physician.

The average patient in the intervention group generated slightly higher costs compared with usual care but it fell within “commonly accepted limits of what is considered to be cost-effective use of resources” from a social and governmental perspective.
The results are interesting because new treatment options for osteoarthritis are needed; about one million people see their GP about it every year in the UK.
“If pharmacists can help get the important messages across that self-management and exercise can be beneficial to people with osteoarthritis, as well as better communication with their GP, then we’d welcome that,” says a spokesperson from Arthritis Research UK.

To read the original research click here.