How many times have you heard “pharmacy needs to shift their focus from product to service”? CPESN® USA and the Community Pharmacy Foundation is planning to help pharmacies do just that through the program “Flip the Pharmacy.” Who are these two organizations?
CPESN® USA is a clinically integrated network of community pharmacies across America. A clinically integrated network (CIN) is a
“collection of health care providers that demonstrates value to the market by working together to facilitate the coordination of patient care across conditions, providers, settings, and time to improve patient care and decrease overall healthcare costs.”
The clinically integrated network (CIN) is the legal entity and network that the health care providers must join. By being part of a CIN, participating pharmacies can engage with each other and contract with other entities, such as insurance companies and government health programs with no antitrust implications. CPESN® Networks of pharmacy providers are currently located in 42 states across America.
The Community Pharmacy Foundation (CPF) is a national non-profit organization that has a long and successful history of providing grants and funding innovation efforts, special projects and studies directly associated with community pharmacy practice and the advancement of patient care services by pharmacists.
CPESN® USA and CPF have partnered to provide a new funding opportunity for community pharmacies through the program “Flip the Pharmacy” where it is anticipated that over 1,000 pharmacies will go through a two-year transformation process of “flipping” from the prescription-level business model to patient-level care processes and business models. The goal is to
“sustain community-based pharmacy practice through the creation of economically viable, scalable and sustainable care and business processes among clinically integrated networks who can contract with payers, purchasers and partners for high value, reliable and repeatable services across thousands of pharmacies.”
This program is anticipated to “more rapidly advance the opportunities presented by an emphasis on value-based care quality payments, clinical measures, and electronic care plans.” Program goals include identifying targets for non-product-based reimbursement revenue, care plan submissions, screenings for behavioral health conditions, reductions in systolic blood pressure, HbA1c percentages, and cholesterol in patients with associated chronic conditions.
The Community Pharmacy Foundation will introduce a new category of grant funding to their existing funding portfolio with this award of over $3.3 million to transformation teams in the first two years of the program. Flip the Pharmacy will award qualified Practice Transformation Teams with funding and resources to act as implementation arms for locally-based community pharmacy practice transformation efforts and over the 5-year partnership, the program aims to graduate more than 1,000 pharmacies from a two-year transformation process.
Six transformation domains have been identified as key components of the transformation efforts and implementation will be supported at the pharmacy-level by transformation coaches. The transformation domains are:
- Leveraging the Appointment-Based Model
- Improving Patient Follow-Up and Monitoring
- Developing Roles for Non-Pharmacist Support Staff
- Optimizing the Use of Technology and electronic Care Plans
- Establishing Working Relationships with Other Care Team Members
- Developing the Business Model and Expressing Value
Flip the Pharmacy Program leaders will be asking Practice Transformation Sites and Participating Pharmacies to contribute to social media and blog from time to time about their transformation experiences.
For more information, go to www.flipthepharmacy.com. and follow @flipthepharmacy on Twitter and Instagram for updates and progress.