Health Groups Aim to Grow Pharmacists’ Care Delivery
Originally published in The Pharmacy Times
Community Care of North Carolina (CCNC), GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), and the University of North Carolina (UNC) Eshelman School of Pharmacy have collaborated to generate new approaches to care delivery through pharmacists that will lower medical costs and improve health outcomes.
“Pharmacists’ practices will change significantly in the next 3 to 5 years. We see tremendous potential in pharmacists becoming integral members of a multidisciplinary team of health care professionals focused on the overall needs of the patient,” said CCNC President and CEO L. Allen Dobson in a press release. “This approach is particularly helpful for complex patients taking numerous prescription medicines. Our research shows that pharmacists have frequent, face-to-face contact with patients, far more than even physicians.”
Initially, the 3 organizations plan to collaborate on several projects, including First in Health and Care TriageTM. The former project offers North Carolina-based GSK employees the choice of a primary care medical home, which includes a comprehensive medication therapy management (MTM) program provided by CCNC, while the latter project will involve all 3 organizations working to define the use of “small data” in pharmacies that could provide pharmacists with new tools and resources to deliver comprehensive MTM services efficiently to appropriate patients...
