Connecting the new healthcare team

The future of American health care could be summed up in one word — “connection.” To thrive in a fast-reforming healthcare system that demands better patient outcomes at a lower cost, pharmacies, physicians, hospitals, health systems, outpatient clinicians and diagnosticians are going to have to connect much more effectively, both with one another and with the patients they serve.

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This move to coordinated care is critically important to the nation’s overburdened and overly costly health system. “A growing body of evidence suggests that when physicians, nurses, pharmacists and other healthcare professionals work collaboratively, better health outcomes are achieved,” said Steve Anderson, president and CEO of the National Association of Chain Drug Stores. To that end, he said pharmacists are “partnering with healthcare providers work ing in nearby health systems and hospitals, serving as part of care teams to help improve patient health and outcomes.”



The nation’s pharmacy providers are helping to drive the change. Wielding advanced automation and data systems, they’re working hard to align their pharmacists’ patient-care and disease-prevention activities with the overall clinical efforts of hospital systems, physician groups and other health providers. In the process, they’re helping to build a new team-based, patient-focused model of coordinated community care.



“Integrated delivery models and team care are the wave of the future, and the way to ultimately control healthcare costs and deliver better care,” said Robert Thompson, recently retired EVP of pharmacy for Rite Aid. “We’re trying to have a broad range of capabilities to participate in that environment.”



In a growing number of stores and regions, “Rite Aid pharmacists and specially trained care coaches, located in Rite Aid pharmacies, work with the physician and patient on an ongoing basis to improve the patient’s overall health and self-management abilities. The care team members collaborate with the patient to establish health goals, eliminate barriers and create a personalized healthcare action plan in coordination with the patient’s physician,” noted a company spokesperson.



Through the company’s Health Alliance program, local and regional health systems are beginning to embrace the idea by enlisting Rite Aid stores in a network of extended care for post-discharge patients with chronic conditions, Thompson said.



“It takes a village,” added Jocelyn Konrad, Rite Aid’s current EVP of pharmacy. “We want to collaborate, whether it’s with other health professionals, employees, health plans — whatever that may be. We want to be part of that solution.”



Linking ‘the healthcare ecosystem’

This new health delivery paradigm is about being “a more integrated part of the healthcare ecosystem,” noted Brad Fluegel, SVP and chief strategy and business development officer for Walgreens Boots Alliance. “Across the spectrum, we’re trying to figure out how to help stitch together various parts of the healthcare system to deliver a better experience for the patients.”



“A lot of what we’ve been doing as we talk with health systems, health plans and others is making sure that we can connect our process and our data with theirs, so that we can help improve adherence rates, close gaps in care that patients might be experiencing and use our digital health tools to create incentives for patients and consumers to take better care of themselves and remain adherent,” Fluegel added.



Richard Ashworth, president of Walgreens pharmacy and retail operations, said the goal “is to leverage the assets that Walgreens brings — including our locational advantage and our core pharmacy capabilities — and to put those together with our other adjunct healthcare services ... in partnerships with local health systems.”



Ashworth called those partnerships “one of the strategic pillars for our healthcare strategy.” And hospital-based health systems, he added, are “the crux of where care is really delivered, which is in the community, by hospitals and health systems and physicians.”



To that end, Walgreens and other pharmacy providers are positioning themselves as the community-based health resource for patients after their discharge from the hospital. It’s about extending and completing the web of patient care beyond the hospital or physician practice setting in a new “collaborative services model,” Ashworth said. “This means we take the assets we have and the infrastructure we have, and work together with the local health system to better coordinate care.”



Connecting the dots in health care can involve every aspect of a pharmacy organization. CVS Health, for instance, joined with the Department of Health and Human Services last year in a partnership involving both its pharmacies and its more than 1,100 MinuteClinic in-store clinics. The goal: To promote an online information resource for Americans that “provides recommendations from government-recognized clinical experts for the personalized preventive services patients should receive based on their age and gender,” according to the company.



“Many of these recommended preventive services are conveniently delivered at MinuteClinic, where we can coordinate with a patient’s primary care physician,” said Andrew Sussman, associate chief medical officer for CVS Health and MinuteClinic president and EVP.



Going digital

This team-based, coordinated network of care will require advanced automation to capture and share patient data and electronic health records in systems that protect patients’ privacy, while still allowing all the members of their healthcare team — doctors, hospitals, clinicians and pharmacists — to share the information needed to make the best informed decisions on their behalf.



Pharmacies have been ahead of the automation and data-capture curve for decades. Their leadership in automated health information began with integrated pharmacy dispensing systems that link all stores within a pharmacy chain on a common information and record-keeping platform. And the rollout of electronic prescribing over the past 15 years strengthened those data connections, forging new links between pharmacies, prescribing physicians, health systems, health plan care coordinators and pharmacy benefit managers in a continuum of care.



All these connections are forging “a more connected and collaborative healthcare system with a technology-neutral platform that exchanges vast amounts of data across a disparate range of health technology systems,” said Tom Skelton, CEO of e-prescribing platform provider Surescripts.



“There is no question that healthcare is going digital,” said Skelton. “Providers ... are sharing critical information to coordinate patient care. Just as we’ve witnessed continued growth in e-prescribing, so too have we seen the complexity of the healthcare system multiply, while patients and providers demand easier access to health information.”