Introducing Clinical Services in Pharmacy Addresses Patient Needs | APhA 2025
Darcy Aslett, PharmD, residency program director for PGY-1 community-based residency at St. Luke's Health System, discusses clinical services in pharmacies for underserved patients.
Darcy Aslett, PharmD, residency program firector for PGY-1 community-based residency at St. Luke's Health System, focuses on innovative clinical pharmacy services designed to address patient needs, particularly in rural areas like Idaho. She highlights the significant challenges patients face in accessing medications and health care, including pharmacy closures, affordability issues, and limited primary care access. To combat these challenges, the health care system has implemented several innovative solutions that expand the role of pharmacists and improve patient care.
Key strategies include developing medication lockers in remote areas, offering home delivery services, and enabling pharmacists to provide expanded prescribing services. Pharmacists can now prescribe medications for conditions like urinary tract infections (UTIs), provide EpiPens and inhalers, and offer collaborative care in partnership with physicians and advanced practice providers (APPs). These approaches are particularly crucial in rural settings where traditional health care access is limited. The success of these initiatives relies on several critical factors: strong leadership support, collaborative relationships with medical partners, and a commitment to clinical education for both pharmacists and pharmacy technicians. Pharmacy residents play a vital role in exploring new program opportunities, writing grants, and collecting data to support these innovative services. Patient outcomes and satisfaction are at the core of these efforts.
By providing personalized medication counseling, conducting medication reconciliation, and ensuring patients receive the right medications with proper guidance, the system aims to reduce discharge errors and improve overall patient understanding of their health care needs. The personal interaction between pharmacists and patients is seen as a significant factor in patient satisfaction.
Ultimately, this approach represents a comprehensive strategy to overcome health care access barriers, leverage pharmacists' clinical expertise, and provide more personalized, accessible health care services, especially in underserved rural communities.
"I think, for clinical pharmacy services that are going to be useful in addressing current patient needs, you first have to really identify what our current patient needs," Aslett said. "I think especially for patients in the state of Idaho or in rural areas, we're looking at different types of barriers that can be actually physically getting your medication because we've had a lot of pharmacy closures, that can be affording the medication, that can be just information and access to knowledge, or even information or access to [a] primary care provider, and I feel like pharmacy can really address a lot of these issues."
