Publications by authors named "Rebecca Marraffa"
Article Synopsis
- Patients on long-term opioid therapy for chronic pain often still suffer from unrelieved pain and quality of life issues.
- This study compared two approaches for managing these patients: an integrated pain team (IPT) focused on holistic care versus pharmacist collaborative management (PCM) concentrated on medication optimization.
- Results showed similar outcomes for both groups in terms of pain response and opioid dosage reduction after 12 months, indicating that both methods can be effective in managing chronic pain.
Objectives: To improve patient care through the development of a clinical risk stratification tool to identify high-risk patients and implementation of pharmacist-mediated medication management after patient care transitions.
Setting: Minneapolis Veterans Affairs (VA) Health Care System from December 1, 2014, to April 1, 2015.
Practice Description: A composite care transition score was developed based on risk factors obtained from a literature review and combined with a national stratification tool unique to the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) primary care population, the Care Assessment Need (CAN) score.
Background: Vancomycin dose selection is challenging in the spinal cord injury (SCI) population because of the difficulty in accurately estimating the renal function. Creatinine-based equations have been shown to be unreliable in this patient population. Adjusted equations designed for patients with SCI have not been well studied.
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