As our country continues to deal with the COVID-19 Pandemic, community pharmacists must prepare for a “new” normal as businesses start to open, people venture out from their homes, and the health care system adjusts to patients coming back to their appointments. This new normal means that until a vaccine is produced, social distancing, frequent hand washing, and use of personal protective equipment becomes part of our daily professional lives. This is just one aspect of our “new” normal.
Another part of our “new” normal professionally is continuing to push our professional agenda to be recognized as health care providers, valued because of the services we provide to our patients, integrated as part of the health care team, and paid appropriately for the care we provide. The best way to “push” our agenda is to demonstrate our value through the patient care services we provide daily. This is how we establish our value—by patients, health care providers, and payers experiencing our patient care initiatives first hand. By experiencing it, they can establish the "value" it provides them.
This is why practice transformation and Flip the Pharmacy are essential to establishing our “new” normal. Our practices have to be ready to perform, perform consistently, and perform with quality. The performance is the provision of enhanced services to our patients and care coordination with other providers. The metric that best measures this performance is the eCare Plan as it documents our patient care activities.
We will be starting our next progression on June 1. The progression is focused on opioid stewardship and appropriate management of patients. It is important that we are prepared for this progression. We have made significant changes/improvements in the monthly change packages to improve the implementation of the different domains of practice transformation. This should translate to increased numbers of eCare Plans submitted by each pharmacy—which should become our “new” normal.
Randy McDonough, PharmD, MS, BCGP, BCPS, FAPhA
Director of Practice Transformation, Flip the Pharmacy
