The University of Southern California is receiving a CMS Health Care Innovation Award to integrate clinical pharmacy services into safety net clinics, providing medication therapy management, disease state management, medicine reconciliation, medication access services, patient counseling, drug information education, preventive care programs, provider education, and quality improvement review for care providers and for the underserved and vulnerable populations of Santa Ana, Huntington Beach, and Garden Grove. This will improve medication adherence, confirm the appropriateness and safety of medication use, and reduce avoidable hospitalizations and emergency room visits, while improving patient and population health. The project is designed to address both the widespread misuse of prescribed medications and the shortage of primary care providers in low-income populations. Further, pharmacists are remarkably underutilized in the US health care system and this demonstration will test and evaluate the impact of using them in primary care settings.
