How to Turn Patient Visits into Clinical Encounters in the Pharmacy | NCPA 2024

Today, effective and executional pharmacy workflow relies on the common goal of shortening wait times and streamlining services. However, according to presenters at the National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA) 2024 Annual Convention and Expo, the future state of pharmacy workflows will be designed around the quality of each patient’s care and their overall clinical experience.

In a session presented at the NCPA 2024 Annual Convention and Expo, Cascadia Pharmacy Group’s Tara Pfund, PharmD, and Cyrstal Bryan, PharmD, presided over the community pharmacist audience to discuss how basic, everyday pharmacy processes are expected to shift in the future.¹

Pfund and Bryan's presentation was titled "Workflow and Mindset Shifts: Enabling Clinical Program Growth in Community Pharmacy." | image credit: Gorodenkoff / stock.adobe.com

“We want to work towards that freedom state, where instead of patients coming to us for a short wait time, they come to us for care. We are that point of access, and they trust us for our advice, and they go back and tell all of their friends, and [then you] have a whole other revenue stream coming into the pharmacy as well,” said Bryan.

The duo went into depth about the structure of a pharmacy’s workforce, from techs and clerks to students and residents. They mentioned how each employee within the pharmacy plays a key role and how pharmacy owners should be assisting their employees on a daily basis to ensure they are working at the top of their licenses. Pfund then shared her thoughts on one of the most important aspects of ensuring any team functions properly, not just in the pharmacy.

“If you think about a good communication plan that’s layered in the vision and where you're headed, that can make a huge difference,” she said.

Pfund went further into depth about how her pharmacy team executes their streamlined workflows and focuses on patient care. She discussed how pharmacists should be encouraged to offer more services than what patients had originally intended prior to visiting. If a clinical encounter at the pharmacy can solve more than one patient outcome, both the patient and the pharmacist will leave that encounter having gone above and beyond the normal processes.

“We ask, ‘Do you want to have a vaccine assessment?’ So, the pharmacist will let you know what additional vaccines you might need, and they say ‘Yes’ or ‘No,’ and we ask for their medical insurance card at that point in time. We then have a pharmacist intern actually remotely logging in…and she prepares clinical recommendations and actually pre-charts in our medical billing software a vaccine assessment for the clinical pharmacist,” continued Pfund.¹

They discussed clinical services in general and the common, and not-so-common, care patients can receive during any clinical encounter at a local pharmacy. According to Bryan and Pfund’s presentation, pharmacists can evaluate, screen, manage, and treat select conditions; conduct medication management; and establish health outcome or value-based care payment models. Furthermore, they gave specific examples of clinical services pharmacists can administer, like point-of-care testing for strep throat, lipid screenings, diabetes management, and so much more.

Ultimately, its pharmacists’ duty to meet and exceed patients’ expectations.¹ At the very minimum, and especially in the community setting, pharmacists should dispense medication and communicate to their patients with the utmost quality. They should also be able to meet patients’ urgent needs and create basic clinical programming.

Bryan and Pfund concluded their presentation by explaining that a good pharmacy workflow is less about the actual tasks done as a business owner or pharmacist, but it’s about transforming the mindset. They stated that to run an operable independent pharmacy, owners should consider shifting the mindset of providers, payors, patients, and most importantly, the pharmacy.

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Coverage of the National Community Pharmacists Association 2024 Annual Convention and Expo was supported by Red Sail, with independent editorial content creation on-site by the Drug Topics team.

Reference

1. Pfund T, Bryan C. Workflow and mindset shifts: Enabling clinical program growth in community pharmacy. Presented at: National Community Pharmacists Association 2024 Annual Convention and Expo; October 26-29, 2024; Columbus, OH.