Author: BAYADA Home Health Care 

How does a provider know if their patient is taking the right medication effectively? They do not, without eyes and ears in the home.  

According to a 2019 Journal of Global Health viewpoint, pharmacists are among the most accessible clinicians in healthcare. In fact, adults in the U.S. visit a pharmacist nearly twice as often as they see a physician or qualified healthcare professional, per a 2022 cross-sectional study in the Journal of Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy. 

This level of access offers medication expertise no other clinician can match, but the real test of whether a patient can follow a regimen begins when they leave the hospital or pharmacy counter and return home to daily life. 

Extend pharmacy’s reach into the home 

For patients recovering from hospitalization, aging at home or managing complex medical conditions, that is where home health care teams enter. We see patients weekly, often every day, in their own environment where medication adherence ultimately succeeds or fails. Where chronic disease is managed or mismanaged. Where recovery either takes hold or does not. 

We help guide patients and families through new diagnoses and care transitions, reinforce their pharmacist’s education and remove barriers to wellness at home. 

Pharmacy brings the precision. Home health care brings the presence. Together, they work to prevent complications that cost families and healthcare systems. 

What we see in the home: The moments that matter most 

For seniors and other patients, the first 30 days of transition from hospital to home can be clinically dangerous. Dr. Harlan Krumholz called this window “post-hospital syndrome” — an acquired, transient condition of generalized risk associated with readmission — in a 2013 New England Journal of Medicine perspective. 

A medication accuracy problem often precedes the adherence problem. A 2020 systematic review in Drug Safety found that nearly half of all adult and older adult patients experience an unintentional medication discrepancy after discharge. In home health, we often see patients come home with a hospital formulary substitution or new regimen they do not understand. 

Sometimes the problem is more accumulated: A patient managing years of prescriptions — a cabinet full of medications, some expired, some duplicated, some from a regimen that no longer applies. 

These are the moments home health care is built to catch — and where a pharmacist’s expertise, brought into the care conversation, can make the difference between recovery and readmission. 

The pharmacy and home health care partnership 

BAYADA serves patients across the entire care continuum — short-term recovery, long-term complex care, personal care, hospice and behavioral health. Our teams are present at every age and stage where medication management is critical. 

Those teams are interdisciplinary: nurses, therapists, social workers and home health aides coordinating care under one personalized clinical plan. Around medications, they organize, educate, remind and monitor, watching for symptoms, side effects and the social factors that affect whether a patient has the means to follow a regimen. 

A pharmacist brings what no one else on the team can: drug interaction review, medication reconciliation and formulary and insurance expertise. 

These roles are complementary by design. Home health care extends the pharmacist’s reach — observing what happens between refills, addressing barriers to adherence and communicating changes in real time. Together, they close loops the larger healthcare system leaves open. 

What high-quality care looks like: Two BAYADA care models 

Here is what that looks like in practice. 

BAYADA Medication Management assesses patient needs at the start of short-term, episodic care at home. Those on five or more medications are flagged for pharmacist outreach and medication reconciliation, and through a home delivery pharmacy, patients who elect this service receive prefilled medication packs. Early results signal stronger adherence and fewer hospitalizations, consistent with a 2021 RAND Corporation study documenting significant decreases in inpatient days and costs using the same pharmacy model.

BAYADA Hospice enrolls patients in close collaboration with a physician, pharmacist and nurse at the start of care, with 24/7 medication access, urgent symptom management and biweekly interdisciplinary meetings where the team proactively identifies patients who need intervention. This model has worked for decades. It is among health care’s most successful examples of pharmacy being fully integrated into a home-based care team, and a blueprint worth adopting far more broadly. 

Home health care is a team sport. Pharmacists belong on that team. 

Pharmacy and home health care share common goals: accessible care, inclusive solutions and keeping people healthy and independent regardless of their circumstances. Achieving them requires collaborative systems between pharmacy and home health care providers, the two clinical touchpoints patients see most. 

Those systems do not yet exist at scale — but the moments do. A nurse calling a pharmacist about a patient’s new prescription. A pharmacist flagging a refill pattern worth watching. These conversations are already happening between professionals who serve the same populations, toward the same end. 

The alliance is already there. Using it more intentionally is the opportunity. 

See how pharmacy and home health care work together at https://bhhc.co/4qShyPu