Abstract
Chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) remains a major healthcare concern. The 24-48 week treatment of pegylated interferon and ribavirin therapy requires a tremendous amount of commitment from patients and providers. Thus, there has been a huge focus on health-related quality of life and various measures to support patient adherence and completion of the recommended HCV treatment regimen. This quality improvement project aimed to develop and test a nurse-driven evidence-based pathway that supports the care of patients receiving hepatitis C medication therapy in a tertiary, academic hepatology practice. All adult patients, 18 years and older, who were started on HCV treatment from January 20 to February 15, 2011, were included in the testing of a nurse-driven HCV pathway for the first 12 weeks of treatment. The majority of the patients treated were male (71.8% prepathway and 83.3% postpathway), of White ethnic background (61.5% prepathway and 58.3% postpathway), genotype 1 (69% prepathway and 91.7% postpathway), and had comorbid conditions classified as "other" (38.5% prepathway and 33.3% postpathway). As for treatment status, the majority of the patients were "treatment naive" in prepathway or had never received prior HCV treatment (59.0%) or "had recurrent HCV after liver transplantation" (41.7%). The 4-week treatment completion rate was 94.9% for the prepathway group and 100.0% for the postpathway group; 12-week completion rate was 87.2% (prepathway) and 58.3% for the postpathway group. The mean 4-week adherence score for the prepathway group was 2.46 and the postpathway group was 2.92. Mean lag time to treatment was decreased with 26 days in the postpathway and 43 in the prepathway. Providers and nurses expressed overall satisfaction with the nurse-driven pathway.