Pitt Pharmacy professor Jim Coons, PharmD (’01), FCCP, FACC, BCCP was recently awarded a Collaborative Care grant from the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists Foundation and American Nurses Foundation. The project is entitled, “Achieving Medication Optimization for Patients with Heart Failure through an Innovative Nurse Practitioner-Pharmacist Collaboration.”
Coons is a co-principal investigator with Jennifer Kliner, CRNP, ACNP-BC. Co-investigators include Mary Keebler, MD, Michael Mathier, MD, Suresh Mulukutla, MD, Floyd Thoma, BS, and Ahmet Sezer, PhD. The project will advance the care of patients with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction through the UPMC Heart and Vascular Institute’s Medication Optimization Clinic (MOC). The goal of the MOC is to enhance optimal guideline-directed medical therapy for patients through use of evidence-based treatments and target doses shown to improve clinical outcomes. The project will scale the existing MOC using an innovative pharmacist-nurse practitioner collaboration and evaluate its impact on reducing heart failure hospitalization and mortality versus standard of care.
