Why is it Important for Specialty Pharmacists to be Incorporated into Care Teams?

Rina Shah, PharmD, Vice President, Pharmacy Operations and Specialty Pharmacy, Walgreens, explores the benefits of incorporating specialty pharmacists into care teams.

Shah: The fantastic thing that we have with our pharmacists—–through the trainings that we were talking about earlier––they get really knowledgeable about the different disease states. We have the opportunity to serve patients that are going through life journey experiences with cancer treatment, and/or fertility, and transplant, HIV, hepatitis C. And so our pharmacists get trained really deep on what’s happening specifically with that disease state so that we understand that patients journey. What we also are able to do is understand the barriers to adherence. So right before they even leave potentially that practice, we connected with that physician to ensure that they’re set up on the right foot. After they get home we continue to care for them, we’ll contact them to make sure they’re staying adherent to therapy and then communicating it back to the physician.