Economic evaluation of adjustments of levofloxacin dosage by dispensing pharmacists for patients with renal dysfunction.

Since April 2011, a dosage adjustment program has been implemented at Gifu Municipal Hospital. In this program, upon receiving a prescription for renally eliminated drugs, pharmacists verify patients' serum creatinine concentrations by using a computerized medical record system to evaluate the patient's kidney function and suggest the appropriate dosage to doctors, if necessary. In our study, we used questionnaires that were administered to pharmacists and doctors at the hospital to investigate their respective working times and the cost of the program, in order to comprehensively analyze the clinical resource costs of the hospital and evaluate the economic burden of the program for levofloxacin. In addition, we studied the pharmacists' and doctors' attitudes toward the program and the circumstances of prescriptions for patients with renal dysfunction. The questionnaire comprised items such as time required for the program; attitude toward the program, including satisfaction; and attitude toward the circumstances of prescriptions for patients with renal dysfunction. The pharmacists' and doctors' working times and cost of the program were obtained from the questionnaire responses. For cost estimation, we used data from this study as well as those of our previous study that suggested that the levofloxacin program was economically beneficial. Furthermore, their attitudes toward the program and circumstances of prescriptions for patients with renal dysfunction were clarified. Regarding the pharmacists' tasks and interventions, we need to not only investigate attitudes toward them but also perform a cost analysis by the method of the economic evaluation of the medical techniques used in our study.