Integrating Pharmacists into Early CKM Detection and Holistic Care Pathways

At the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions 2025 in New Orleans, Neerja Balachander, MBBS, PhD, discussed the critical role of pharmacists and allied health professionals in advancing early detection and holistic management of Cardiovascular-Kidney-Metabolic (CKM) disease. She emphasized that the healthcare system can no longer rely solely on physicians to meet patient needs and highlighted the importance of integrating pharmacists into routine workflows to support early diagnosis through tools such as urine albumin-to-creatinine ratio (UACR) testing, which remains significantly underutilized. Balachander explained that pharmacists are well positioned to identify high-risk patients, facilitate communication across care teams, and provide more frequent follow-up and medication reconciliation than physicians alone.

Pharmacy Times: Pharmacists are often among the first to identify patients with multiple overlapping risk factors. How can they be better integrated into multidisciplinary care teams to support early detection and holistic management?

Neerja Balachander, MBBS, PhD: Such an important part. I don't think that our healthcare system 15 years ago was how it looks now, and I suspect that in the next 15 years, we're going to go more and more into allied healthcare professionals being part of healthcare and holistic care. There is no way that one specialty or one physician can hold, and we don't have enough physicians. We need the help of not just our pharmacist colleagues. We need the help of nurse practitioners, PAs, NPs, and all of us together, patients and caretakers as well, in the business.

But to your question on pharmacists specifically, I think it's really a great opportunity that perhaps we start education for pharmacists on what CKM is. We bring them into how you diagnose these patients early. I was just talking about how UACR as a test is so underutilized. It's as easy as a pharmacist in a system putting it into a part of an auto check-in box. I mean, EMRs and EHRs are easily programmable, but they only work if you use them right.

And I think pharmacists are a great way in which they can actually bring that care piece along with the patient need, along with something that might not be top of mind for a physician. They can tee it up for them. They can identify the patients at high risk as well. And all this comes with better education and them being part of the workflow for a patient as well as part of the care pathway.

The best thing is that a pharmacist can also carry on with the reconciliation of medication. They can follow up with the patient at a higher clip than a physician can. So I would be remiss if we say that they are not part of our journey. Fortunately, they are. I'm excited to say that we are integrating the allied healthcare professionals as part of our educational journey. And I'm sure that AHA is doing that.