Recommendations for Implementing Preventive Care Services

Jim Kirby, PharmD, BCPS, CDE, and Sr. Director of Pharmacy Services for The Kroger Co., discusses his recommendations for implementing or expanding preventive care services in your pharmacy. This video was filmed at the 2019 NACDS Total Store Expo in Boston.

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Jim Kirby, PharmD, BCPS, CDE: So for pharmacies looking to implement or expand their preventive care service offerings, I’d say the first thing that needs to happen is to instill the purpose and the ‘why’ in the pharmacy staff, and not just the pharmacists but the technicians in particular because they’re the front line of health care to our patients. So one is that, is instilling the purpose and getting them to be motivated and passionate around this, as you may be.

Then comes the training piece. Training them on what you want to say, how you want to say it, or a particular point-of-care task that we may be providing, or educating them on a new vaccine that we’re now going to be recommending to our patients. So training would be the next piece.

And then lastly, I would say, particularly when we’re looking at the sustainability of these services or the financial viability of these services in the pharmacies, it’s imperative to partner with others in the industry that are offering these services. So whether this be manufacturers and you’re partnering with them to get unbranded information to use in your training materials, or in some of these lab network aggregators they have a way to bill for your services to the health clients directly and be able to use your data and integrate it inside of their systems. Those sorts of partnerships are absolutely critical.