The way Mick Murray sees it, if an electronics store provides customers with as much information as possible before they buy a cell phone, a pharmacy should do no less for patients buying medications.

Mick Murray, PharmD, MPH Mescal S. Ferguson Distinguished Professor and Division Chair Division of Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy Research Interests Developing pharmacy services that improve drug use in patients with chronic disorders such as high blood pressure or asthma, determining how computers prevent errors in prescribing, use of health care by low-income minority groups, and pharmacoepidemiology.

“What we have is a bunch of people running around that know more about their cell phones and DVDs than they do about the potent medications that they take,” says Murray, who chairs the UNC School of Pharmacy’s Division of Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy. “There’s something wrong with that picture.”

Murray is working to make that picture right by studying how new pharmacy services help patients take their medications properly. One such service, Murray says, is simply asking more questions when patients pick up their prescriptions at pharmacies.

“One thing we’d like to do is verbally instruct people more at that point, and to make sure they know what they’re doing with their medications when they leave, because there’s just not enough instruction,” he says.

“Some people go home with a leaflet in their bag, but they can’t read. If you can’t read even the label, you’re not going to take the medication the right way. Those are the kind of services that could improve the chance of the drug working better.”

Tracking Drug Therapy

One of Murray’s research interests focuses on older patients with cardiovascular conditions. One of the tools he uses is a medication container that has a computer chip implanted in the lid. Each time the container is opened, the chip records a time stamp. Researchers can extract the information from the chip to see how much and how regularly patients are taking their medication. That data helps determine how much new pharmacy services are helping patients take their medication more reliably.

Murray also studies the use of health-care by low-income minorities, an interest that grew out of the fact that he has conducted most of his studies in inner cities.

“A lot of the work that I’ve done have been in the city-county hospitals, and most of those people don’t have many resources, including money, so that’s been a target of interest,” Murray says. “We’ve done a number of different studies looking at the cost of heart failure, cost of asthma, more or less burden-of-illness studies.”

Murray is studying two main pharmacy services: providing clearer instructions that accompany the medications and having pharmacists spend more time with patients to answer their questions.

“In heart failures, we know it reduces emergency-department visits and hospitalizations, and these are problems that cost patients and health care more money,” Murray says. “When you provide more information to patients and help them try to take their medications more reliably, costs go down because things like hospitalizations and emergency-room visits go down.”

Murray is hoping that collaboration with pharmacies will help him gather more data to provide a better barometer for the effectiveness of new practices.

“We’re talking to Kerr Drug to see if we can do these kinds of studies there,” he says. “Right now the results we have are just based on small numbers of pharmacies, but we’re hoping we can implement this in a chain pharmacy like Kerr Drug.”