Are Wellness and Proactive Health the Future of Pharmacy?

In the current reactive health care model, patients will usually need a diagnosis to access health care. However, patients today are increasingly looking for information on how to not get sick in the first place. This is where a proactive health care model can help. This model seeks to prevent the onset and progression of chronic disease, as well as help patients to avoid getting sicker when they do have an illness.

Kathy Campbell, PharmD, pharmacist and patient advocate at Medicap Pharmacy in Owassa, Oklahoma, and CEO of DrKathy Health, sat down with Drug Topics at the American Associated Pharmacies (AAP) Annual Conference, held April 4 to 6 in San Diego, California, to discuss why wellness and proactive health are the future of pharmacy and the unique value that a wellness-focused pharmacy offers compared to traditional models.

“I think the pharmacist is perfectly suited to be the intelligent, trained, reliable, trusted resource for our patients and for our communities, before they are patients, to actually give them access to science and support on being well,” Campbell said. “That’s it. Not needing the diagnosis. Not needing the medications. That really is, I think, the new model for pharmacy. It’s really what’s in our heart anyway. We don’t want these patients we’ve known for years to be sick, to have the cancer diagnosis.”

Campbell added that a wellness focused model offers value to a pharmacy because pharmacists are trusted in their community and patients look to them for advice on health.

“I think the value proposition for pharmacy in wellness is that we know a lot,” Campbell said. “We can help you, but consumers don’t know that yet. I know my consumers know that about me, they trust that, and they’re willing to invest with the products I sell because they trust me to give them the right information.”

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