Case Study: MU Health Care achieves improved diabetes outcomes and clinic efficiency with Cerner’s ViPRx virtual pharmacist

Virtual pharmacist provides cost-effective way to promote quality care

University of Missouri Health Care needed a way to deliver consistent pharmacist-led medication review across more than 60 clinics—particularly to improve care for patients with diabetes—without embedding pharmacists at every location. The challenge was to identify medication appropriateness, adherence issues and necessary monitoring across a large, dispersed patient population.

In 2016 MU launched ViPRx, a virtual pharmacist program from Cerner |Works that reviews patient records before and after visits and uses HealtheRegistries to track impact. Clinicians accepted the pharmacist’s lab-monitoring suggestions 78% of the time and nonadherence counseling 72% of the time; diabetes outcomes improved (patients with HbA1c ≤9% rose from 66% to 72%, and LDL control from 65% to 74%), showing a scalable, cost-effective improvement in care.

MU Health Care

Bushra Muraywid

Pharmacist