Role of Pharmacists, Pharmacy Extenders Expanded During COVID-19 Pandemic

With the COVID-19 pandemic creating a substantial disruption in the health care field, interventions to transform ambulatory care pharmacy through the growth of telehealth became vital.

“Our ambulatory care pharmacy team leveraged technology, innovative workflows, and collaborative teamwork to catalyze a shift in pharmacists' and pharmacy extenders' roles in health care delivery to expeditiously meet patients' needs during a pandemic,” wrote researchers.

The initial gap in care began in March 2020 because of inpatient redeployment because of provider appointment cancellations and primary care clinic closures.

The development of standardized telehealth workflows as well as collaboration with other health care providers created new roles and opportunities for pharmacy team members, wrote researchers.

Study authors reported 3 main interventions where gaps were filled by pharmacy team members:

• Expansion of pharmacist telemedicine visits for high-risk patients to improve access to primary care visits,
• partnership with nursing to create a centralized refill call center workflow, and
• integration of pharmacy extenders into the prior authorization process to prevent medication access issues.

Telehealth visits increased from 51 in 2019 to 2997 in 2020—which researchers attributed to the new virtual pharmacist model for patient care. In collaboration with the pharmacy team, the health system refill call center also expanded its services. To address the substantial increase in refill requests during the pandemic and to improve the call center’s workflow, pharmacy interns and pharmacists collaborated with nurse practitioners.

Medication access was expedited and delays in therapy were prevented through the utilization of a prior authorization process created and implemented across multiple ambulatory care clinics.

Reference:
Liu C, Patel K, Cernero B, et al. Expansion of pharmacy services during COVID-19: pharmacists and pharmacy extenders filling the gaps through telehealth services. Hosp Pharm. 2022; 57(3):349-354.doi: 10.1177/00185787211032360.