Drug Cost Awareness

Polypharmacy and prohibitive drug costs are common problems for patients being discharged from the inpatient rehabilitation unit at the University of Utah Medical Center (UUMC). Prohibitive drug costs borne by patients may result in decreased compliance and adversely affect outcomes. Currently, it is difficult for resident and attending physicians to anticipate these drug costs prior to discharge. We hypothesize that residents in the Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PM&R) program at UUMC have insufficient training on the cost of drugs commonly prescribed at the time of discharge on the inpatient rehab unit. The goal of this quality improvement (QI) study is to assess whether improved awareness of drug costs will decrease the overall expense of medications prescribed at discharge. There is ongoing discussion to improve access to drug cost, implement a smart up-to-date drug cost tool into the EMR.