BATON ROUGE, La.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Amedisys, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMED), a national leader in healthcare at home, today released a study that focuses on how medication management interventions in a post-acute care setting can help reduce avoidable hospital readmissions.

Amedisys and Purdue University, in partnership with HealthStatRx, conducted a study from January 2012 through April 2012. Results showed that the patients in one of the study’s medication therapy management intervention groups had a reduced readmission rate of eight percentage points over the patients in the control group.

The medication therapy management study focused on:

• Risk-stratifying of patient population and modeling the probability of hospitalization during the home health episode of care.
• Engaging a pharmacist to review patient charts for any possible triggers; with the pharmacist proactively notifying the Amedisys care team including the physician and home health caregivers if any issues were identified.
• Having the pharmacist directly engage the patient via a phone call immediately upon admission to home health to educate them on their evaluation of their medication/s and also conducting follow-up calls directly with the patient between day seven and day 30.
• Collaboration between the pharmacist, physician, patient and the Amedisys care team to resolve any identified problems.

“Our findings indicate that patients in risk level 1, who can take medications independently and have fairly good functional health, benefit from this type of intervention,” stated Dr. Alan J. Zillich, PharmD, Associate Professor of Pharmacy at Purdue University and lead investigator on this study.

“This study also shows that a strong relationship exists between the probability of hospitalization, the patient risk score and the total number of medications a patient is on,” stated Julie Lewis Sutherland, vice president of research and development for Amedisys. “Just as we hypothesized, post-acute care interventions can make a positive impact on preventing issues the elderly may have with their complicated medication regimes; ultimately resulting in lower readmissions.”

More than 40% of people over the age of 65 take five or more medications, and each year, about one-third of them experience a serious, adverse drug event, like a bone-breaking fall, disorientation, inability to urinate or even heart failure.

To view the case study on how post-acute care medication management can help reduce hospital admissions/readmissions, please click here.

About Amedisys:

Amedisys, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMED) is a leading health care at home company delivering personalized home health and hospice care to more than 360,000 patients each year. More than 2,200 hospitals and 61,900 physicians nationwide have chosen Amedisys as a partner in post-acute care. Amedisys is focused on delivering the care that is best for our patients, whether that is home-based recovery and rehabilitation after an operation or injury, care focused on empowering them to manage a chronic disease, palliative care for those with a terminal illness, or hospice care at the end of life. Amedisys also has the industry's first-ever nationwide Care Transitions program, designed to reduce unnecessary hospital readmissions through patient and caregiver health coaching and care coordination, which starts in the hospital and continues throughout completion of the patient's home health plan of care. For more information about the Company, please visit: http://www.amedisys.com.

Amedisys, Inc.
Kendra Kimmons, 225-299-3720
Marketing & Communications
[email protected]

Source: Amedisys, Inc.