What Clinical Programs Can Do for Pharmacists

Heather Cusick, PharmD, of McKesson and Byron Jones, PharmD, a "super-user" of McKesson's clinical programs, discuss how the programs are changing the way pharmacists work. This interview was filmed at McKesson ideaShare 2019 in Orlando.

Heather Cusick, PharmD: I think with the changing landscape for pharmacy today it’s actually a really exciting time for pharmacists, because there’s been a long, and probably too long, period of time where pharmacy and the pharmacists were just thought of as dispensing of the medication, and weren’t realized for their value in that whole care continuum. And I think pharmacists always knew we had the value and we were providing it, but it wasn’t necessarily getting recognized. So I do feel like having the tools now available to them, being able to document what you’re doing as it’s occurring, then you can share that with other providers in that patient’s care, which is really, I feel like, helping advance and show that value to the other providers. So now that patient’s provider would then recognize what the pharmacy is doing, they can actually have a conversation and work together. So I actually think the tools are helping them show the value that they’ve been doing all along.

Byron Jones, PharmD: Yeah, and just to back up what Heather just said, you know, the tools become really powerful avenues for us to identify when therapies are not working, or when they’re sub-optimal. Two of the programs we developed are specifically geared toward diabetes, one of which identifies when the patient is on medications that are outdated.