T'Bony Jewell, PharmD, MBA, RPh Pharmacy Post-Doctoral Scholar The Ohio State University College of Pharmacy
These last few years have been trying for both patients and pharmacies, and I have found myself on both sides of the counter wondering how to help. During the 2019 NCPA annual conference, when I was working in an independent pharmacy, I heard about CPESN and the way they were helping community pharmacies scale clinical services and get paid the work they were already doing. Back then, I was fresh out of school and very new to how independent pharmacy managers dealt with issues like this. I was excited to get started and have the state luminaries help us to hit the ground running, offering more than dispensing and immunizations. We weren’t a paying member of CPESN due to the many competing financial priorities and failed to take advantage of the FREE materials put together as resources they made available to the public. However, in my new role as an academic fellow with Ohio State’s College of pharmacy, I have been able to flex my time as a FtP coach and help member pharmacies work their way through the change packages. I get to see in real time how their implementation is affecting pharmacists time on the bench, freeing them up to provide other clinical services. This includes having more impactful patient experiences. I have heard from some of the pharmacists how their appointment-based models have helped to increase the amount of education they are able to provide to their patients. In particular, the diabetes change packages have allowed one pharmacist at Clinic Pharmacy, in Columbus, Ohio, to build better relationships with the providers that they share a building with. Kayla, their FtP champion, relayed to me how the providers they collaborate with tap them to provide patients counseling on their diabetes injectables and injection technique. Their patients seem much happier with the level of care they receive and often have better outcomes.