Addressing the decline in graduating pharmacists

The healthcare sector is bracing for the repercussions of a significant decline in the number of graduating pharmacists, raising concerns about the future.

Recent data indicates a reduction by nearly 10%--in the graduation rates of pharmacy students across the United States. Additionally, the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy found that pharmacy school applicants have declined by nearly 60% within the last decade.

The decline in pharmacy students is attributed to various factors, including changes in career preferences among prospective students, the prevalent perception of pharmacists experiencing burnout and financial constraints linked to pursuing pharmacy education. But no matter the cause, the trend has become a notable concern within the healthcare sector. And addressing it requires more than just boosting enrollment numbers. We need to tackle the issue at its core.

Burnout is a significant deterrent for many potential graduates. It necessitates comprehensive strategies that embrace innovative solutions like AI-driven automation. By automating the tedious administrative work that often leads to burnout and detracts from patient care, these solutions address the prevalent manual and administrative tasks. This, in turn, makes the job more appealing by allowing pharmacy teams to concentrate more on patient care.

Consider the variety of non-clinical, labor-intensive tasks, such as document data entry. These workflows are pervasive and often complex. Artificial intelligence offers a solution by streamlining complex decision-making and disparate data processes, allowing it to effectively act on these intricate workflows.

By leveraging technologies like AI, pharmacy teams can streamline workflows, enhance efficiency and alleviate the burden on pharmacy teams. This improves the attractiveness of the profession and immediately helps alleviate the burnout.

Beyond addressing labor shortages, these technologies inevitably end up redefining the patient journey for the better. Given AI’s capacity to replicate sophisticated decision-making processes, envision a scenario where AI extracts information from handwritten notes containing vital patient medication data, a task that, prior to innovations in optical character recognition and natural language processing, needed to be completed by a human. Machine learning is then employed to analyze this collected data across currently disjointed data sources, proactively predicting potential issues and preventing human errors.

AI automation in pharmacy operations also could include inventory optimization and planning, 340B auditing and financial reporting and missed claims qualification identification. At Plenful, we recognize that administrative tasks like these can be most successfully executed by leveraging AI. We’ve been fortunate to witness how pharmacy operations teams across healthcare have prioritized AI innovation, leading to more efficient and effective workflows.

As pharmacy teams assess AI software solutions for their workflows, they should identify automations that help alleviate strain. They should prioritize purpose-built pharmacy operations automation solutions, as generic tools will likely not address pharmacy’s unique complexities. They also should collaborate closely with vendors that have backgrounds in pharmacy operations and tailored solutions to specific pharmacy requirements. Continuous monitoring and feedback gathering are also essential for successful onboarding

The decline in graduating pharmacists presents a significant challenge, but within this challenge lies an opportunity for innovation. By embracing AI-driven automation, we can mitigate labor shortages, enhance efficiency and elevate patient care to unprecedented heights.