Why Community Pharmacy Differentiation Matters
As more community pharmacies offer direct healthcare services to patients, helping those patients choose the best option becomes critical. Having this ability accessible to all, ensures anyone can pick the right pharmacy for their specific needs.
The ability to quickly identify a pharmacy’s services especially becomes important in the wake of the Rural Health Transformation. The RHT’s goal to eliminate underserved healthcare deserts becomes easier to achieve with meaningful community pharmacy differentiation.
Notably, distinguishing community pharmacies by the services they provide fits nicely with the pharmacy rating system developed by Seguridad. It makes choosing the best pharmacy as easy as picking a restaurant for a night out on the town. Let’s take a closer look.
Once Again: Not All Pharmacies are the Same
Seguridad’s COO Tripp Logan realized soon after graduating with a PharmD degree that all pharmacies are different from each other. He commented on this fact in an article in Pharmacy Technology and Management Review.
“My dad (Seguridad’s Director of Strategic Operations, Richard Logan) was always very integrated with local providers,” says Logan. “He would go to the clinics and work there with them. I’ve watched it my whole life, but his pharmacy always looked like any other independent on the provider list. To me, the future of community pharmacy practices is differentiating the pharmacies to providers. When they look down a list of pharmacies, in reality, pharmacies are not the same.”
Community pharmacies increasingly help close healthcare gaps by offering medical services beyond the dispensing of medications. As a result, more patients consider their local pharmacist to be a long-term provider, like a primary care physician.
In addition to dispensing medications, community pharmacies increasingly provide patient care services, like vaccinations.
In fact, in medical deserts within rural areas, where doctors are scarce, some pharmacists effectively act as a PCP. In this situation, finding a community pharmacy with the talent and skills for longitudinal care becomes vital.
The Importance of Upskilling Pharmacy Techs as Community Health Workers
A critical aspect of community pharmacies providing direct care to patients involves the cross-training of pharmacy technicians. Upskilling techs as community health workers (CHWs) ensures they have the right skill set for patient care. Logan understands that employing CHWs is a major point differentiating pharmacies.
“I would say that our pharmacy has 11 technicians who are cross-trained as community health workers. But then you go to the next pharmacy, and all they offer are prescriptions, which is fine for some patients,” noted Logan. “Longitudinal care coordination and follow-up is fundamentally different than having a prescription mailed to you.”
This kind of differentiation is important to patients, employers, care providers, and health insurance organizations. Once again, it also lies at the heart of Seguridad’s health measures. Notably, one measure actually tracks whether the community pharmacy employs CHWs.
As the role of the community pharmacy evolves, rating their overall quality and service offerings becomes critical. In the end, community pharmacy differentiation ensures patients, employers, and providers can choose the best one!
