Hepatitis C Track

Michigan's hepatitis C (HCV) cases have been on the decline since 2022, due to several coordinated efforts including, eliminating Medicaid restrictions, partnering with a pharmaceutical company to offer low-cost direct acting-antivirals (DAA), to hiring an academic detailer to educate medical students and providers, to creating a hepatitis C disease intervention specialist (DIS) program to link individuals to care.

The Department of Health and Human Services developed a National Strategic Plan to eliminate hepatitis C (HCV) as a public health threat by 2030. However, many barriers to accessing care remain. Pharmacists have increasingly played a role in the treatment of HCV and can support patients and care teams with navigating barriers at multiple steps along the care cascade. The Collaborative Drug Therapy Management (CDTM) model offers a strategy to leverage expertise of embedded pharmacists to improve HCV treatment access and outcomes.

Expanded screening for hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection aims to improve awareness of diagnosis, yet treatment uptake remains suboptimal due to structural, social, and individual-level barriers. People who use drugs face further challenges in accessing HCV treatment due to fragmented care, stigma, and limited support. Strategies to overcome these challenges are needed to improve health equity and achieve HCV elimination. We developed a quality improvement pilot project to integrate expedited DAA initiation, defined as prescribing of DAA during hospital admission.