administration and other areas, said she believes retail pharmacies have strengthened their relationships with their communities, as well as with individual patients during the past year. “The return to normal couldn’t happen without the vaccination of a large percentage of the population, and certainly no one in the healthcare sector is more responsible for that than the pharmacies,” Canally said. The fact that retail pharmacies conducted point-of-care COVID-19 testing during the pandemic lays the groundwork for additional services in the future, she said. “They’ve already put policies and procedures and processes in place for point-of-care as it relates to COVID, so they’ve readied themselves if they choose to expand pointof-care testing,” Canally said. Beyond testing, retail pharmacies also have the opportunity to expand into offering more value-based care, such as
“Even before the pandemic, study upon study showed the potential for pharmacies to improve routine vaccinations, chronic disease care, health outcomes for the underserved and all those issues. During the pandemic, they didn’t go away. They were essentially amplified.” — SARAH ROSZAK, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT OF HEALTH AND WELLNESS STRATEGY, NACDS medication therapy management, she said, noting that the key to success in building these services for patients is the coordination of care with other healthcare providers. “The more coordination you have with a prescriber and the more you show the doctor that you can better manage a patient with diabetes, for example, then that communication and coordination is going to evolve into an increase in prescriptions, which equates to more business,” Canally said. “You need to bring that extra value not only to the patient, but also to the prescriber. I think that’s key.” While time constraints may be holding pharmacists back from expanding their value-based care offerings, Canally suggested that operators start slowly with a small group of patients who could benefit from such care and build from there. “I think that in the future we will see more dependency on the pharmacist and the pharmacy as the place to go for health care,” she said. “We will still need physicians, of course, but I believe that the pharmacist has created and will sustain a much more active role in health care.”
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Retailers can also benefit from having the quality of their services validated by a third-party accreditor, such as The Compliance Team, Canally said. The company has added certification for pharmacies that do point-of-care testing and COVID testing, as well as immunizations, which expanded to include pediatric immunizations as many retail pharmacies were unaccustomed to vaccinating children, she explained. NCPA’s Hoey said that thanks to the expansion of COVID testing during the pandemic, more pharmacists also have become interested in point-of-care testing. NCPA offers a training program in point-of-care testing, he said, and has seen a “huge increase” in pharmacists taking the program. He also noted that employers likely have taken more notice of the value that pharmacies provide, which could open up opportunities for pharmacies to offer additional services for workers, such as blood pressure screenings, through contracts with employers. “Brick-and-mortar pharmacists are well positioned to be able to provide that service, and save millions of dollars and hundreds, if not thousands, of lives,” Hoey said. He cited the Community Pharmacy Enhanced Services Network, or CPESN, as being well positioned to capitalize on this opportunity. CPESN, which was one of the independent pharmacy networks authorized to administer COVID vaccines, organizes networks of independent pharmacies to negotiate for the provision of such services as these. Hoey said he is hopeful that pharmacists will gain ongoing authority to order and administer vaccines, as well as the payment mechanisms to support those and other services that pharmacies have proven well suited to provide. “This should be a stark reminder for payers and legislators that if there’s not fair payment for the dispensing of the product, these pharmacies won’t be around for the next pandemic or for the next public health emergency,” he said. “You’ve got to pay the pharmacies fairly on the dispensing side, as well as engage them for their preventative services.” Clay Heinz, group vice president of healthcare growth and strategy at TTEC, a customer experience technology and services company, agreed that the concept of using retail pharmacies as an efficient venue for simple healthcare solutions. “The real question will be how the big chains develop strategy that builds on this momentum,” Heinz said, citing the opportunity for retailers to leverage their digital connections with customers. He said he believes that drug stores will evolve to resemble urgent care facilities more closely. “There is a big push in the provider ecosystem to meet the patients where they want, and this isn’t necessarily a big hospital with a marble foyer,” Heinz said. “The answer is providing simple health care in a wide variety of settings that meet the needs of different consumers. The drug store industry will leverage the ‘convenience’ strategy and massive real estate footprint for a more effective and efficient delivery of primary care.” dsn
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