From the Publisher: Pharmacists Are Frontline Players

The summer brings many issues to the pharmacist’s doorstep as frontline players in the health care scene, and Pharmacy Times is here to help you tackle the challenges of the season. In our special Pharmacy as a Health Care Destination section, we focus on summertime cases that test your clinical skills and your OTC product knowledge. As you know, prevention and treatment are the watch words for summer cases. In this special section, we also take a look at one success story—a unique program that engages everyone involved in health care and truly helps patients. Take Care Clinics, spearheaded by Walgreens Take Care Health Systems, the country’s largest provider of convenient care clinics, is a partnership between pharmacists, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants, who team up to find the most cost-effective treatments, with a particular focus on prevention. This cutting-edge approach offers patients access to care they might not otherwise receive, across 19 states and counting. For those who have lost their jobs in these difficult economic times, the clinics also offer a unique helping hand.

As part of this month’s special focus on skin disease, we look at the latest burn and wound care products in OTC Focus. This is another area where pharmacists are front and center, often the first to be reached when a patient presents with minor burns and wounds. Our CE this month focuses on psoriasis, a chronic condition that affects more than 7 million Americans. This lesson will explain the epidemiology, risk factors, and pathogenesis of psoriasis, and pharmacists will learn how to identify various types, understand the most recent guidelines for management, and counsel patients.

Keeping up with trends and innovations is a commitment Pharmacy Times takes seriously, and in that light, we introduce a new feature this month that focuses on those companies driving innovations in the pharmacy market. The first article in our series is about Parata, the automated dispensing systems pioneer and a real leader in the market. Safety, efficiency, and yes, even environmental issues, are involved in the newest products. One pharmacist from Fortuna, California, offers a case study in the use of the latest automated device, and he and his customers agree: “It’s a big deal.”

We are pleased to announce another big deal to our valued readers: our brand new Web site, OTCGuide.net, which brings the respected annual 2009 Pharmacy Times OTC Recommendations Survey, now in its 13th year, directly to you online and searchable by product and category. We thank the thousands of pharmacists who participated in this survey, covering 145 categories in 19 therapeutic topics. It’s the most comprehensive review of its kind and will be a useful resource all year long, any season, anytime. Thank you for reading.

Mike Hennessy