Data, Pharmacy Data Everywhere. How’s it helping Patients?

Frantic.

That’s how I would describe him.

He hit the front door of the pharmacy hollering, “Doc, Doc, I need help!”

At a dead run, he went straight up the center aisle, jumped into the pharmacy, grabbed me by the arm, and pulled me into the back room. Sweating profusely and in obvious pain, his next words were, “You gotta look at this.”

Now anyone who has been in healthcare knows when someone says “you gotta look at this”, you don’t want to.  It’s almost like someone holding something to your face and saying “smell this”.  The answer should always be NO!

However, this time it was too late.  We were in the back room.  His polyester pants (and yes, his underwear) were around his ankles.  In a shaky voice, he said, “The waitress spilled a whole pot of coffee in my lap.”

Well, I looked, nodded my head, avoided the desire to shout a profanity, and said, “Oh my, that looks really painful. (Second degree burns!!) Let me call your doctor and see if I can get you in ASAP.”  Around that time, a woman walked into the back room and immediately turned and fled, but that’s a story for another day

Ten minutes later he comes back in, with his pants on this time, holding a couple of prescriptions.  I filled them, sent the claims to his insurance company, charged the copays, and sent him home with an ice pack.

Encounter Data vs. Dispensing Data at a Community Pharmacy

Can you pick out the data elements in the story? There’s quite a bit of data there. That is, unless you’re his insurance company. They only care about the data documenting the two prescriptions filled and that they adjudicated them. That’s it; just those two scripts.

That type of pharmacy data is known as dispensing data. It leads to a paid claim.  That’s it. Boring.

Differentiating between pharmacy encounter data and dispensing data is increasingly critical.

What about the rest of the data? It’s known as encounter data.  What’s encounter data?

Encounter data is the rest of the story any pharmacy has to tell. It documents things like the initial encounter, the patient’s complaints, what the pharmacist sees, what actions the pharmacy initiated, the ultimate results, and likely the ultimate outcome over time.

Without the encounter data, you lose the richness of the whole story. You lose patient context. You lose the opportunity to better serve the patient.

Community Pharmacies must capture Encounter Data

Differentiating encounter data and dispensing data is critical for pharmacies in today’s medical world. As healthcare professionals, we need to focus more on capturing encounter data. With community pharmacies providing more patient-centered care, we need the whole patient story, not just info on a couple of dispensed prescriptions.

Capturing encounter data is not as simple as transmitting a prescription claim.  It requires us to be healthcare professionals, utilizing our skills in patient care but also documenting our use of them. 

Patient encounters generate valuable information. It’s critical data. Unlike a prescription claim where every entity touching it thinks they own it, encounter data is your data, and it tells a complete story to improve patient care.

We must learn to capture and utilize encounter data within our practices. It is one of the keys to the future of pharmacy practice. If we fail at utilizing all patient data for improved care, I fear we will be exiting the profession faster than that lady who strayed into the back room.