How Can Care Coordination Improve Care for Patients Taking Specialty Drugs?

Shah: Ultimately for care coordination it’s always about … if we think about the patients experience, they have to really manage the physicians’ expectations, the nurses’ expectations, they’re doing things at home, and what we do at Walgreens is we really look to be that single point of contact for that patient. How do we make their lives that much easier. And so, care coordination to us, what that translates to is having our pharmacists trained so that they understand, and really ultimately what does that patient need for them to stay healthy. And we help and coordinate that on behalf of the patient from a medication standpoint, with their nurses, with their physicians. And as they go home and take their medications, what we also end up doing is communicating that back to the physician so they know exactly what’s happening once that patient has left their practice.