April 30, 2014
Joel Farley, PhD, has received nearly $400,000 from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to study the continuity of medication management in Medicaid.
“Patients with more than one chronic condition are complex to treat and often have poor health outcomes,” says Farley, an associate professor in the Division of Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy. “For patients with serious mental health problems, the presence of additional chronic conditions may actually double the risk of dying from a cardiovascular event. These patients require continuous care to lessen the risk of poor health outcomes.”
Farley’s team will examine continuity in the prescribing of medications to patients with multiple chronic conditions including serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and its effect on health outcomes. The study team also plans to examine the role of the medical home at improving health outcomes in patients with noncontinuous care. The RO1 grant will provide $393,000 in total funding over eighteen months.
“The medical home helps link patients to a continuous source of care to help complex patients manage their health across different settings,” Farley says. “This study will be one of the first to specifically examine how this model of care might improve health outcomes in patients with multiple chronic health conditions that include schizophrenia.”
Farley is collaborating with Marisa Domino, PhD, from the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health; Matthew Maciejewski, PhD, at Duke University; and Richard Hansen, PhD; at Auburn University. This study team collaborated on past projects and recently completed two AHRQ grants to examine the care of patients with multiple chronic conditions in the Veteran’s Affairs and North Carolina Medicaid settings.
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