UCSF Medical Center has partnered with Walgreen Co., the nation's largest drugstore chain, to open a pharmacy on the University of California, San Francisco's campus.
The UCSF School of Pharmacy will also be a key player within the Walgreens at UCSF. Financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed.
Officials said they wanted to pilot the pharmacy to help improve medication safety, decrease healthcare costs and help patients use medicines more effectively.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 82 percent of American adults take at least one medicine every day, and 29 percent take five or more medications. In addition, every year, 700,000 emergency department visits and 120,000 hospitalizations stem from medicine problems.
"Every time a patient is readmitted to the hospital because they did not take their medications, it has a direct impact on both their health and their healthcare costs," said Daniel Wandres, PharmD, chief pharmacy officer of UCSF Medical Center, in a news release. "By creating this three-way collaboration, we hope to create a national model for eliminating medication-related readmissions and reducing medication errors nationwide."
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