Strategies for Encouraging Collaboration in Clinical Decision Making

Aislinn Antrim: Hi, I’m Aislinn Antrim from Pharmacy Times. Before we get started today, one of our top stories right now is about how non-oral pre-exposure prophylaxis options may improve patient adherence, so there’s more about that on Pharmacy Times. Today, I’m speaking with Dr. Peter Bonis, Chief Medical Officer of Clinical Effectiveness at Walters Kluwer Health, about the importance of uniting prescribers and pharmacists at the point of care. So, Dr. Bonis, clinical decision making can be a complicated process in health systems, involving formularies and prescribers and pharmacists—there’s a whole slew of people involved. How can these decision makers work together?

Peter Bonis, MD: It’s a challenge, and one that has potential to worsen as new health care delivery models drive patients to varied sites of care like telehealth and urgent care retail settings, and others. So, care coordination and gaps in care have all of the potential to become increasingly challenging as patients try to navigate through all these different health care settings. There are several approaches that can help. One of them is to ensure that all of the stakeholders—so, caregivers, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, allied health professionals, and the patients themselves—share a common understanding of evidence-based and contemporary approaches to care. So, content, resources, decision support, care protocols, and patient education efforts should ideally be harmonized to help drive toward more standardized evidence-based care.