Overview

Pharmaceutical innovations can have a significant impact on disease prevention and treatment. The Henry Ford Health System has developed ambulatory pharmacy management programs to help patients benefit from new drugs while controlling the Detroit-based system's costs. One program uses low molecular weight heparin, which costs $42 more per day than heparin, on an outpatient basis for patients with deep vein thrombosis. As a result, the length of stay for these patients was reduced by 2.29 days and their cost per admission was lowered by $864. Another helped 84 percent of patients achieve their cholesterol level goals through the appropriate use of statins. This "lipid clinic," however, had high direct costs and hard-to-capture savings. For more information, see the Fund report under Related Resources.

This study was based on publicly available information and self-reported data provided by the case study institution(s). The aim of Fund-sponsored case studies of this type is to identify institutions that have achieved results indicating high performance in a particular area, have undertaken innovations designed to reach higher performance, or exemplify attributes that can foster high performance. The studies are intended to enable other institutions to draw lessons from the studied organizations' experiences in ways that may aid their own efforts to become high performers. The Commonwealth Fund is not an accreditor of health care organizations or systems, and the inclusion of an institution in the Fund's case studies series is not an endorsement by the Fund for receipt of health care from the institution.