Cody Parsons, APh, PharmD, BCCCP, says protected pharmacist access lets patients with heart failure be seen more often than typical clinic visits allow.
In an interview with Pharmacy Times, Cody Parsons, APh, PharmD, BCCCP, director of clinical operations in the division of cardiovascular health at Stanford Health Care, discussed how pharmacists at Stanford are helping close gaps in guideline-directed therapy for patients with heart failure. The discussion took place ahead of his presentation at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions 2026, taking place November 6–9 in Chicago, Illinois.
Parsons said pharmacists are essential and are embedded at every key phase of care at Stanford: inpatient admission, the transition to outpatient care, and the outpatient setting. Inpatient, a unit-based pharmacist advocates for each patient daily through order verification, proactive profile reviews, and bedside rounds with the multidisciplinary team.
Every patient expected to code with a primary heart failure diagnosis-related group automatically receives transitions-of-care pharmacy services, including profile review, medication education, and discharge medication reconciliation with a personally updated after-visit summary. The team recommends therapies with proven morbidity, mortality, and readmission benefits and works with social work and case management to overcome medication access barriers, which Parsons noted are common with newer agents.
In the outpatient setting, providers can refer patients to a pharmacist-run cardiometabolic service that manages heart failure with reduced ejection fraction, heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, lipids, and glucagon-like peptide-1 therapies. Beyond the standard heart failure medication pillars, the service includes proactive diuretic management that may help prevent admissions or readmissions. Because pharmacist access is protected, patients can be seen far more often than typical cardiology clinic access allows.
Pharmacist support varied nationally across IMPLEMENT-EF sites, Parsons noted. Dedicated pharmacists rounding on patients and providing disease and medication education was one of 4 workflows the initiative identified as an ideal care model. Some institutions also use pharmacists for the 72-hour follow-up call and 7-day follow-up visit—roles Stanford fills with heart failure clinical nurse specialists, but that Parsons said pharmacists could fill.
