A ground-breaking drug-prescribing programme that delivers better care with big savings won the Royston Hospital Supreme Award at last night's Hawke's Bay Health Awards.
In a partnership between primary and secondary health providers, Hawke's Bay District Health Board-appointed pharmacists helped GPs prescribe drugs at Greendale Family Health Centre, Te Mata Peak Practice and Totara Health.
The clinical pharmacists helped manage patients with complex medicine regimens and medicine adherence issues.
Judges said the winners demonstrated leadership, collaboration and ability to engage across health sectors.
"It showed fantastic collaboration and was able to demonstrate improved patient outcomes," the judges said.
In accepting the Supreme Award DHB chief pharmacist Billy Allan said he had known the programme would succeed "for years".
He was co-winner of the Hawke's Bay Health Sector Leadership Award, with emergency department nurse practitioner Sharon Payne.
"You just have to be persistent when you know it's the right thing," he said.
Patients in the trial had fewer falls, hospital admissions, emergency department presentations and recorded greater satisfaction.
A secondary benefit was financial. The equivalent of one-and-a-half full time positions saved nearly $1 million for the year.
The team also won the BuddleFindlay Team of the Year Award.
The DHB has rolled out the programme to eight clusters of practices with eight clinical pharmacist facilitators.
Targeted patients include over-65s living in age-related residential care facilities, patients with high-needs disease states and those transferring from one care provider to another.
Drugs are one of the DHB's biggest expenses and the Government's drug-buying agency Pharmac is the traditional avenue for controlling costs, rather than higher-quality prescribing.
Clinical Pharmacist Facilitators working in general practices took out the Skyline Aviation Excellence in Innovation Award and the Health Hawke's Bay Excellence in Provider Collaboration and Integration Award.
DHB chief executive Dr Kevin Snee said the pharmacist programme was a well-deserved winner and was being closely watched by other DHBs.
"They did a good job of working with GPs improving quality of care, giving savings that can be invested in other areas," he said.
Dr Snee spoke of very different health outcomes in the region when presenting the HBDHB Reducing Inequalities Award, won by Central Health: Porangahau-ora, a population health approach.