Q&A: The COVID-19 Pandemic Changed the Landscape of Health Care

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, pharmacists emerged as unexpected heroes, navigating unprecedented challenges with creativity, resilience, and unwavering commitment to their communities. As information changed rapidly and uncertainty grew, pharmacists quickly adapted their strategies, leveraging social media, personal connections, and innovative communication methods to keep patients informed, supported, and safe.

Tom DePietro, PharmD, owner of DePietro's Pharmacy, described his journey through the pandemic, revealing a powerful narrative of health care transformation. By going live daily on social media, making personal phone calls to vulnerable patients, and providing immediate, face-to-face consultations, these pharmacists did more than dispense medications—they became lifelines for their communities. Their experience highlights the critical role of independent pharmacies in delivering personalized, local health care and demonstrates how a crisis can accelerate recognition of health care professionals' adaptability and essential services.

As information changed rapidly, pharmacists quickly adapted their strategies by leveraging social media for updates to patients. | Image Credit: Aron M - Austria | stock.adobe.com

Drug Topics: How did you adapt your patient counseling and education strategies during the pandemic, especially with the influx of information and misinformation?

Tom DePietro, PharmD: Information was changing so quickly, so I might say I might have an answer right now and tell you something, and then 20 minutes later, it changes. So I think, looking back at it, we really leveraged social media to connect a lot with our customers. We were very active, and we went live every single day. Like, "Hey, here are the updates from today." So then, not only do we do it for educational purposes, we also had some fun, like me and our local mayor, like we would get on and just do like a 20-minute talk show, so to speak, to just really bring some levity to the air. It was for the beginning week, so we had no idea what was going on. Like, could I leave the house? Do I wipe down my groceries? What do I do when I get home from work? Like, just ridiculous questions when you look back at it now that you had to ask yourself then, and then we also just like we would adapt by calling some of our home delivery patients that we don't see on a daily basis. Anyway, we kind of like took a list, went through that list, to call some of our seniors just to make sure, "Hey, do you need anything? Do you have any questions"? Because obviously most of our information is being delivered via social media, so I don't believe that they would have access to us. So just trying to look at nontraditional ways, or traditional ways, I guess, if you look at the phone call to just reach the consumer.

Drug Topics: What are the biggest opportunities and challenges you see for independent pharmacies in the post-pandemic landscape?

DePietro: I think just the idea and the ability to show what pharmacists were able to deliver during COVID should tell payers or tell legislators or tell the community, like, "Hey, don't count us out." If we could do that for COVID, we could do it for other things; you just need to give us a shot. Give us a seat at the table, and I think we will see that become more embraced. We just need to have some sort of payment modality around it, but I do think that we have definitely brought the concept of what pharmacists do to life more quickly than it would have without the pandemic.

Drug Topics: How do you think independent pharmacies can continue to play a vital role in community health and patient care in the future?

DePietro: We deliver health care personally, we deliver it locally, and we deliver it in person. There's not many big pharmacies that could check those boxes. Obviously, a mail order—I say mail order has a rule, but we service a very particular patient. We service a patient who is on a lot of medications, who can't really get to the pharmacy or likes to get to the pharmacy. So I think like checking all of those boxes, personal care, in-person, professional, it's just as much as they try to knock independent pharmacies out, they can't because they can't account for that touch. They can't account for the relationship that we have with our customers. So I think independent pharmacies will continue to do what we always have done, but other people, namely the payers, are going to want to work with us rather than against us.

Drug Topics: Do you have any recommendations for policy changes or support systems that would help independent pharmacies better serve their communities?

DePietro: We all have the same ideas when it comes to policy changes. One would have to ask, being that this apparent that we need reform and this apparent that these insurance companies make billions of dollars, it's no surprise that health care needs reform, but what's really alarming is the fact that all of this stuff is out in the public, and it's very apparent that we need help when we need reform, but it's not coming. So I think consumers should kind of really perk up and advocate for themselves. I mean, when we advocate for payment reform, we're advocating, obviously, for payment reform, but we're also advocating for a safer filling environment. Obviously, we can't just continue to fill thousands of prescriptions, making pennies and paying someone to do it. What comes of it is short labor help and increase work demands and then mistakes. So, we're advocating for payment reform, which a will bring more profit to the pharmacies to be support the staff that needs to fill the prescriptions. I mean, I think we need consumer consumers to also get loud because what they don't see is health care is just like slowly crumbling away, and we're not, pharmacy owners that alone, aren't loud enough to get change to happen as we could see.

Drug Topics: Is there anything else you would like to add?

DePietro: I think deploying vaccines into the community is something that regardless of what the vaccine is, whether it's COVID vaccine, flu vaccine, pneumonia, or shingles, I think it just goes to show you the position that a pharmacist is in to provide preventative health care to the consumer. There's no other profession that you could get or obtain immediate access to a health care provider. Closest you can get to a pharmacist is probably an urgent care, where you still do have to check in [and] wait to get called back. You could literally walk into any pharmacy today and ask to speak to the pharmacist, and the pharmacist is going to walk over and look you in the face. There's no other health care provider that is positioned like a pharmacist is, and I think that that we just have to continue to leverage that to try to create a healthier community for the betterment of the public.