When I began my career as a community pharmacist 30 years ago, the telephone was the pinnacle of technology supporting how we filled prescriptions. Before that, I can remember the community pharmacist advising patients for common ailments and they served as a trusted, accessible healthcare provider.
Fast forward to today when Surescripts processes more than 2 billion prescriptions electronically each year, with the information prescribers and pharmacists needed to care for patients, available at their fingertips.
Innovation has changed how we deliver healthcare for the best. But the COVID-19 pandemic uncovered major gaps in pharmacist and prescriber workflows, including time-consuming administrative tasks that we know are contributing to concerning levels of provider burnout and driving costs sky-high.
Given these challenges and more, in 2023 I think we will see patient care go ‘back to the future,’ as community pharmacists will deliver more clinical care and grow as part of patient care teams.
Outside forces driving comprehensive team approach
Care teams are changing out of necessity. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated clinician burnout – from doctors to nurses and every role in between—creating a workforce shortage with broad ranging consequences. Health systems, especially in rural communities, are facing more financial strain, rising inflation and staffing challenges, have also forced them to discontinue services once offered to communities.
As a result, delivering healthcare in silos is no longer working.
Community pharmacists are trusted and accessible to deliver care
The COVID-19 pandemic put community pharmacists at the center of care for many patients. Providing vaccinations and doing limited prescribing during this time helped build patient trust in their pharmacists’ ability to deliver a greater level of clinical care. In many ways, this was a return to the role pharmacists once played in caring for their communities.
And today’s pharmacists are even better equipped to provide clinical care. More than half of licensed pharmacists in the U.S. are Doctors of Pharmacy, meaning they have more extensive training in clinical care than when I graduated from pharmacy school.
Patients also see their pharmacists much more frequently than other providers. According to one analysis, high-risk patients average 35 visits per year to their community pharmacy, compared to four visits to their primary care provider and nine visits to specialists.
Community pharmacies are now central to many patients’ healthcare routines and are much more accessible as nine in ten Americans live within five miles of a pharmacy. It makes sense that in 2023, pharmacists are filling a gap and will continue to play an important role as part of patient care teams.
Technology and interoperability: the glue that strengthens care teams
Advancing healthcare technology and improving interoperability are essential components to effective care teams that can deliver the quality care patients deserve.
Surescripts technology delivers interoperability across network of health systems, pharmacies, health plans and technology vendors who are committed to reducing administrative burdens, improving patient safety, lowering costs and empowering physicians and pharmacists to provide quality care.
Surescripts is giving clinicians access to the right clinical patient information at the right time. When providers have the patient intelligence they need, available within their existing workflow, they can return to what they do best – help patients in their community manage complex diseases like diabetes, hypertension and other multiple comorbidities.
We’re ready to join pharmacists as healthcare goes back to the future – supporting these trusted and clinically trained members of the care team so they can do what they do best – care for their patients.
By Frank Harvey, CEO of Surescripts