Evaluation of clinical pharmacy services in a hematology/oncology outpatient setting. Ann Pharmacother 2006

The trend in healthcare delivery in the US has beenshifting from the acute to the ambulatory care setting. An increasing number of clinic visits, same-day proce-dures, and medication administration visits are being com-pleted in the outpatient setting, resulting in fewer hospital admissions and overall shorter lengths of hospital stay. Due to this shift, ambulatory care has expanded to a wide range of disease states, which has added more opportuni-ties for clinical pharmacists. The literature has documented that, in addition to the traditional disease states of diabetes mellitus,1 hypertension,2 hyperlipidemia,3,4 anticoagula-tion,5 and asthma,6 clinical pharmacists are having an ever-increasing impact in areas such as cessation of tobacco use, chronic kidney disease, polypharmacy, formulary therapeutic interchange, and adherence.7,8 In addition, many studies have demonstrated that clinical pharma-cist–managed ambulatory care clinics effectively control rising healthcare costs.2,5,9-11 While these clinical pharmacy opportunities and services in the ambulatory care setting are well defined and documented, data addressing hema-tology/oncology services are lacking