Implementing a personalized pharmaceutical plan in kidney or liver transplant patients: study protocol for a stepped-wedge cluster randomized trial (GRePH)

Background: Nowadays, the main challenge of transplantation is the improvement of long-term care, aiming at reducing treatment-related complications and at decreasing rejection rates. Patients' adherence to both treatment and hygienic-dietary measures is mandatory to achieve these objectives. Adherence to immunosuppressive drugs is estimated to be only 70%. We hypothesized that the implementation of a personalized pharmaceutical plan (PPP) would increase adherence and therefore graft survival. Methods/design: This study is a stepped-wedge cluster randomized trial with transplantation units defining clusters. Twelve clusters from 10 university hospitals were recruited. All centres started on the same day in the control phase. Every 7 weeks, one centre will switch to the intervention phase and remain there until the end of inclusions. We plan to recruit 1716 kidney and/or liver transplant patients. The intervention phase consists in setting up the PPP: development of the patient's hospital and community pharmaceutical follow-up. In the hospital, the pharmacist will carry out drug reconciliation upon admission, daily pharmaceutical follow-up of prescriptions and pharmaceutical interviews with the patient in order to explain the modalities of taking immunosuppressive drugs and hygienic-dietary measures. After hospitalization, during the post-transplantation year, pharmaceutical meetings will take place, prior to medical consultations in order to check the patient's understanding of the prescription, his adherence, to remind them of hygienic-dietary measures and to look for adverse effects. The hospital pharmacist will also be in charge of establishing a close link with the community pharmacist (CP) and general practitioner, especially providing discharge medication reconciliation, an e-learning and a checklist. Moreover, prior to each pharmaceutical consultation, the hospital pharmacist will contact the CP to discuss patient adherence. The primary outcome is adherence to immunosuppressive treatments 1 year post-transplantation assessed by using the BAASIS questionnaire and the health insurance data from the national health data system. A medico-economic study will measure the efficiency of this plan. Discussion: GRePH aims to increase adherence of liver and/or kidney transplant patients to their immunosuppressive therapies in order to reduce transplant rejections. To this end, a new clinical pharmacy model, the PPP, will be set up in 10 university hospitals.