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MEDTECH A study published in JAPhA on January 10, 2023, conducted in a community pharmacy in Buffalo, NY, successfully tested a CHW model to address patients’ social needs.
Community pharmacies, through partnerships with community health workers (CHWs), can play a pivotal role in addressing social determinants of health (SDOH), aiding in improving overall patient health outcomes.
Key Points:
- Pharmacy staff, in collaboration with three community-based organizations, successfully screened patients for social needs and referred them to an embedded CHW.
- Eighty-seven social needs were identified in the study, with 31% issues related to neighborhood and built environment, and 30% economic stability challenges.
- Post-intervention, 70% of surveyed patients agreed that community pharmacies should help with their social needs.
Additional Points:
- CHWs spent an average of 33 minutes per patient from initial case review through follow-up.
- CHWs are credentialed through local certificate training programs and often share the same cultural understanding as their patients.
- Training pharmacy technicians to become CHWs could be more efficient than hiring from outside and giving them pharmacy-specific training.
- L & S Pharmacy in Charleston, MO was the first in Missouri to train CHWs through a pharmacy-based training program.
Conclusion:
- The successful implementation of a CHW model in a community pharmacy setting demonstrated the feasibility and effectiveness of this approach in addressing social health needs of patients, supporting the notion that pharmacies play a vital role in value-based care arrangements.
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“Pharmacies are in the outcomes business now, and we don’t talk about that enough. This is the secret weapon for getting into value-based care arrangements.”
Tripp Logan, PharmD
L & S Pharmacy
Charleston, MO
