Better Together, Highlighting Pharmacists' Success

ARH is working diligently to help improve medication access and adherence. Through Pharmacy Care Clinics their knowledgeable and well-trained pharmacists help improve medication access and adherence while offering disease state management and medication counseling for a variety of conditions.

To expand equitable access to care for the Appalachian region ARH has worked to include ambulatory care pharmacists in their privileging and credentialing process. Thanks to their dedicated leadership team 8 pharmacists are currently undergoing the process with plans to begin enrollment with health plans soon!

Learn more about the work that ARH is doing is here.

Baptist Health Pharmacy is continuing to expand specialized clinical roles for pharmacists in ambulatory and specialty practice settings. In 2022 Collaborative Care Agreements were standardized and implemented in 4 specialties: Oncology, Neurology, Heart Failure, and Tobacco Cessation. Several additional CCA templates are slated for implementation in 2023. 

With a New Epic build launched in late 2021 for Specialty Pharmacy to enable streamlined workflows and patient management documentation. Expansion of Epic Compass Rose to include Value Based Care/Population Health and Medication Therapy Management/Disease State Management is in process for 2023. 

Baptist Health Pharmacy has launched Pharmacist Credentialing and Privileging for Oncology practice areas and will be expanding to other specialties in 2023. As an organization, Baptist is invested in bringing the best of the best talent to care for our patients across the state. A future goal is to continue to collaborate with other health systems and pharmacies in the Commonwealth to expand profession billing reimbursement opportunities for pharmacists. 

Learn more about the work Baptist Health Pharmacy is doing here. 

Capital Pharmacy and medical equipment in Frankfort Kentucky offers advanced practice services such as colorectal cancer screenings, immunizations, Covid testing, medication therapy management and naloxone dispensing. Patients frequently inquire about these services. Capital also offers a One-Stop program where patients medications are automatically refilled in sync with all of their maintenance medications and personal compounded prescriptions.

Currently, Capital Pharmacy has not began the process of medical billing for these advanced services. Over the course of the next year, we hope to begin this process and incorporate more advanced services into every day practice. 

Learn more about the work that Capital Pharmacy is doing here.

Through collaborative practice agreements, the Ambulatory Care Pharmacists provide chronic disease state management services for a variety of conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, and anticoagulation, pain management, and more. Through the collaborative practice agreements, pharmacists are able to order appropriate labs to monitor disease states and drug therapy and have helped improve patients’ healthcare and the health system’s quality measures. 

These services and offerings continue to expand as the system is able to appropriately bill and reimburse pharmacists. Through new legislation in KY and partnership with our payors, pharmacists have been able to directly bill for their services in a manner similar to midlevel providers such as nurse practitioners and physicians’ assistants. As payors acknowledge the high level of care pharmacists are providing, and compensate for that care, systems such as The Christ Hospital are able to continue expansions to accommodate a greater number of disease states and patients.

Learn more about the work the Christ Hospital is doing here.

The team at Hometown Pharmacy in Campbellsville is dedicated to helping patients “Stay well with us”. Through innovative practices combining pharmacy experience with nutritional education, they are helping their patients live their best quality of life. Through collaborative care agreements, custom compounding, vaccination services and Board Authorized Protocol-driven care for UTI, Flu, Strep, and COVID testing they are paving the road to health and wellness.

To increase the affordability of the excellent patient care they provide they are working on implementing medical billing at their practice and hope to be enrolled and accepting insurance in the next year.

Learn more about the work Hometown Pharmacy is doing here.

At NOVA Pharmacy, we push the professional envelope as hard as possible. We strive daily to increase our abilities for our patients and providers we work in collaboration to better serve the citizens of Eastern Kentucky. We provide access to 19 of the Board Approved Protocols and seek to expand our CLIA-waived testing beyond the regular Flu, Strep, COVID, and UTI testing. We are working toward expanding these services to include lipid panels and A1C monitoring in 2023. 

We are working tirelessly to implement medical billing and have recently decided to internalize this process with an in-house biller and coder. We have shifted our mental perception of what a patient needs when coming for pharmacist driven care and have created documentation for a patient's chart, including intake, visit, and billing tracking. We are already seeing our patients begin to seek these pharmacists' services with testing and educational appointments because they trust what they already have with us. Over the next year we hope to refine our processes to improve and increase our patient-provider interactions. Too much time is lost in the paperwork time versus quality patient interaction time.  We will keep pushing insurance companies and Medicaid to accept our services and create pharmacist networks.

Learn more about the work NOVA pharmacy is doing on Facebook or Twitter.

Through a memory enhancement program, functional medicine and nutritional consultations, and nutritional testing the staff at Poole’s Pharmacy Care are dedicated to providing each of their patients personalized services to help promote health and wellbeing at all stages of life. In the next year they are hoping to increase their services at all locations with colorectal cancer screening, travel health services, influenza, streptococcus, urinary tract infection, and tobacco cessation protocols.

To increase the affordability of the excellent patient care they provide they are working on implementing medical billing at their practice and hope to be enrolled and accepting insurance in the next year.

Learn more about the work Poole's Pharmacy Care is doing here.

At Sheldon’s Express Pharmacy our advanced practice services include strep, flu and covid testing as well as UTI testing.  When it came available, we ran with it.  We do those all day, everyday and they have worked out really well for our patients.  We want to provide that to our customers, so that they will be able to walk in and get tested and treated.

We are always up for new things that are win / win for our customers.  We will definitely move forward with other protocols that helps the community and services that we are capable of doing.  In 2023 we plan to continue to look at business models that will help our customers.

Learn more about the work Sheldon's Express Pharmacy is doing here.

Ambulatory pharmacists within the six St. Elizabeth Medication Management Clinics see patients under a collaborative care agreement to help optimize complex specialty medications. Patients are referred for a variety of disease states, including: Anticoagulation, Dermatology, Endocrinology, Hepatitis C, HIV, HIV Pre-exposure Prophylaxis, Hyperlipidemia, Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Oncology, Osteoporosis, Pulmonology, Rheumatology. Ambulatory pharmacists and resident pharmacists work alongside of family medicine medical residents and attending physicians in the St. Elizabeth Family Practice Center to assist with patient care and support medication-related needs and teaching.

St. Elizabeth Physicians has a team of pharmacists primarily funded by quality performance. They work on value-based contracts and are embedded in primary care and specialty provider offices so they can offer comprehensive medication management services and improve these quality measures.  The precision medicine program at St. Elizabeth has expanded in 2022, hiring a second pharmacist specializing in pharmacogenomics (PGx). Pharmacogenomics testing is ordered by providers across the system and PGx pharmacists provide medication recommendations for therapy changes where indicated.

Learn more about the work St. Elizabeth Healthcare is doing here.