Managing Warfarin Patients - New Approach to Save Lives and Money

A new approach may help warfarin patients to improve care and save money, reveals study.

Developing new performance measures for managing patients on anticoagulant drug warfarin may improve care and cut down treatment costs.

Warfarin is a commonly prescribed anticoagulant (blood thinner) used by millions of Americans to treat or prevent blood clots and/or strokes. Warfarin management can be measured by the proportion of time patients spend in the therapeutic range -- the range in which they are protected from blood clots and not at excessive risk of bleeding.

Warfarin

This medication is an anticoagulant, prescribed for deep venous thrombosis and pulmonary embolism.

‘New performance measures may help to manage warfarin patients by improving care and cutting down treatment costs.’

Previous research has shown that hospitals and physician offices vary in terms of how skillfully they manage their patients on this drug. Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) have now developed several performance measures intended to help hospitals and clinicians improve the management of warfarin in their patients. These findings appear in the Annals of Pharmacotherapy.

Patients on warfarin in the eight medical centers in the VA's New England region were compared to patients receiving warfarin in other parts of the country. "Patients who used these measures did better clinically than those in the control group," explained corresponding author Adam Rose, MD, associate professor of medicine at BUSM.

According to the researchers while previous studies have intervened to improve warfarin management at a single site or practice, this is the first such study to improve care across an entire health network.

New Oral Anticoagulant Drugs Prove to be Effective as Warfarin Against Stroke
New oral anticoagulant drugs are used in the prevention of stroke in atrial fibrillation patients as it causes less bleeding.

"This study serves as a model for how other sites and health networks could feasibly approach improving the management of warfarin in their systems. If all anticoagulation clinics in the VA were to achieve this level of improvement, it would prevent 48 strokes and 68 major bleeding events each year, with a savings to the VA system of more than $4 million annually," he added.

Rose believes that if a similar approach were adopted by other large health systems, there could also be improvement of patient outcomes and savings due to averted adverse events. "Insufficient attention has been given in the past to how we can improve the management of warfarin; this study demonstrates that a relatively simple approach can have a large impact."

Oral Anticoagulants or Blood Thinners
Warfarin is the most commonly used oral anticoagulant. Dabigatran etexilate is a newer drug recently approved for use by the FDA.

Source-Eurekalert

Quiz on Anticoagulants
Anticoagulants, commonly referred to as “blood thinners”, are medications that interfere with the body’s natural blood clotting mechanism. Anticoagulants are necessary if the patient has a deep vein thrombosis (“DVT”), a blood clot in a vital organ such as the heart, brain or liver, or if the patient has a condition that predisposes to blood clot formation such as atrial fibrillation or a hypercoaguability disorder. When a blood vessel is blocked by a clot, the individual could suffer a heart attack, pulmonary embolus or a stroke-all potentially fatal conditions. Anticoagulants also play a vital role in the preventative care of several health conditions. Take this quiz to find out how much you know about anticoagulant medication: