Community Care of North Carolina – A statewide initiative for innovative pharmacy practice with a behavioral health focus

Abstract

Community Care of North Carolina (CCNC) is a state-wide public/private partnership, primarily serving North Carolina (NC) Medicaid recipients, which focuses on the Primary Care Medical Home model of care. The CCNC Behavioral Health Pharmacy Coordinator has a leadership role for the direction and management of Behavioral Health Initiative (BHI) pharmacy projects, while other CCNC clinical pharmacists work in a variety of settings and help to implement and support those BHI projects. CCNC clinical pharmacists also perform medication management in all settings, help to implement the NC Medicaid Preferred Drug List (PDL), support the care managers, and are involved with the transitional care (TC) process. Transitional care medication management focuses on the identification of medication list discrepancies after discharge from an acute care facility. Patients receiving TC were 20% less likely to return to the hospital in the coming year. We observed the same trend even when looking specifically at those patients who were discharged from a psychiatric unit (Wilcoxon-Gehan statistic = 21.22, p<.0001). It is the goal of the CCNC behavioral health team to provide practicing pharmacists (those directly supported by CCNC and those collaborating with CCNC) with the tools to continue serving populations with behavioral health issues.