Innovative Collaboration between a Medical Clinic and a Community Pharmacy: A Case Report.

William R Doucette

doi:10.3390/pharmacy7020062

Abstract

As value-based payments become more common in healthcare, providers can develop collaborative relationships to support performance. A medical clinic and community pharmacy worked together to deliver collaborative medication management services to targeted patients in an accountable care organization. The community pharmacy was paid by the clinic to conduct comprehensive medication reviews (CMRs) for 116 patients. The CMRs initially were delivered to patients taking at least 10 medications and to patients rated as high cost/risk by the clinic. The most common medication-related problem types were Needs additional therapy (38.8%) and Suboptimal therapy (19.0%). The most common pharmacist actions were to Change medication (18.1%) and Initiate new therapy (13.8%). Financial analyses showed net savings in annual patient out-of-pocket expenses just over $15,000 for the cohort of patients, and net annual direct cost savings from a payer perspective of about $70,000. This innovative partnership between a medical clinic system and a regional pharmacy chain built upon initial discussions and planning. The partners were able to address problems that arose with their collaboration, changing their approach as needed. The outcomes were positive for the clinic and pharmacy, their patients and the payer(s). Interested providers are encouraged to pursue similar collaborations, which could be key to success in today’s healthcare environment.

Highlights

The current healthcare environment has made value-based payments a popular approach [1,2].Under such programs, providers often can benefit from closer coordination with each other across the continuum of care
Representatives of the McFarland Clinic and NuCara Pharmacy met with personnel from the University of Iowa and the Iowa Department of Public Health to discuss how the team approach could work between their organizations
There were several innovative components of this collaboration, including: a clinic paying a community pharmacy to improve patient care under an accountable care organizations (ACOs) model, the clinic actively engaging patients and providers to participate with the pharmacy services, and the clinic connecting with the pharmacy via its EMR

Summary

Introduction

The current healthcare environment has made value-based payments a popular approach [1,2]. Under such programs, providers often can benefit from closer coordination with each other across the continuum of care. Especially for managing chronic conditions, is the medical clinic–community pharmacy. Both of these providers are involved with helping patients achieve positive outcomes from medication therapy while working to limit total costs of care [2,3]. Though some clinic–pharmacy coordination is occurring, few detailed descriptions have been published about successful collaboration between clinics and community pharmacies under the evolving value-based payment environment [4,5].

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Discussion

Conclusion