Best practices: Incorporating pharmacy technicians and other support personnel into the clinical pharmacist's process of care

Abstract

Changes to the U.S. health care landscape have increased the focus on the quality and use of alternative payment models, with a growing focus on value. As health care costs continue to rise, clinical pharmacists will increasingly engage in roles to expand the breadth and depth of clinical services in providing comprehensive medication management (CMM) to improve patient outcomes. The roles of pharmacy technicians and other support personnel must evolve to meet the needs created by this practice change and allow pharmacists to focus their services on activities that use their expertise to improve medication outcomes. Support personnel, including pharmacy technicians, should be identified to assist with clinical pharmacy tasks on the basis of their skills. To ensure competence, support personnel should be adequately trained and (if applicable) certified. Moreover, support personnel should be optimally incorporated into appropriate components of the clinical pharmacist's process of care to expand the reach and depth of clinical pharmacy services. When supervised by the pharmacist or others as defined in state practice acts, support personnel may be able to assist in the clinical pharmacist's provision of CMM. Finally, research should be conducted and disseminated on the utility and outcomes achieved using support personnel in the clinical pharmacist's process of care.

Perceived roles of independent community pharmacists and pharmacy technicians in patient referrals to community resources: A Study from the Medication Safety Research Network of Indiana (Rx‐SafeNet)

“…Examples of these best practices include ensuring appropriate certification and training of support staff and incorporating support staff into appropriate parts of the PCPP. With regards to the latter, the white paper notes, “…support personnel can also assist with scheduling and communicating referrals to other health care providers.” Our findings demonstrate a need to clearly define roles for pharmacy technicians in referrals and provision of associated training. This recommendation is consistent with Hudmon et al work demonstrating success with two models (academic detailing and mailed materials) for engaging community pharmacy staff (both pharmacists and pharmacy technicians) in promoting referrals to a tobacco quitline .…”

“…As pharmacist roles have expanded into direct patient care services, optimizing the utilization of pharmacy technicians and other support staff has been a commonly cited consideration . Available literature demonstrates the positive impact on patient care and safety when incorporating community pharmacy technicians into more direct patient care processes, and a recent white paper outlines “best practices” for engaging these personnel in ways which support pharmacist provision of patient care services . Examples of these best practices include ensuring appropriate certification and training of support staff and incorporating support staff into appropriate parts of the PCPP.…”

“…With regards to the latter, the white paper notes, "…support personnel can also assist with scheduling and communicating referrals to other health care providers. "21 Our findings demonstrate a need to clearly define roles for pharmacy technicians in referrals and provision of associated training.This recommendation is consistent with Hudmon et al work demonstrating success with two models (academic detailing and mailed materials) for engaging community pharmacy staff (both pharmacists and pharmacy technicians) in promoting referrals to a tobacco quitline 22. Clear roles and training for community pharmacists and pharmacy technicians in making quitline referrals were developed, with pharmacy technicians positioned to refer interested patients to pharmacists and the quitline for counseling 23.…”

Wage Premiums as a Means to Evaluate the Labor Market for Pharmacy Technicians in the United States: 1997–2018

“…In pharmacy, the role of the pharmacist has been increasingly supported by the pharmacy technician. Pharmacy technicians support pharmacists in dispensing medications, performing clinical functions needed to improve the outcomes of mediation use [4][5][6], and to perform a number of administrative functions which assist in the operations of a pharmacy [7]. Pharmacy technicians have been asked to increasingly take on roles that had previously been exclusively performed by pharmacists, including reviewing medications and checking the work of other technicians prior to dispensing [8,9], taking medication histories [10], managing warfarin therapy within a clinical pharmacy anticoagulation service [11] and immunization delivery [12].…”

Technicians and pharmacy's quadruple aim

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In the current issue of JACCP, Borchert et al propose, in a White Paper, that the expansion of pharmacy technician roles to support clinical pharmacy services such as comprehensive medication management (CMM) is necessary. 1 There is no question that, in the course of delivering CMM, many of the functions commonly performed by pharmacists do not require an advanced degree, for example, conducting early steps of medication reconciliation, performing point of care testing, rooming patients, appointment scheduling and reminders, etc. Having a pharmacist perform these and similar functions is an expensive proposition given that technician salaries are typically 1/4th to 1/3rd of pharmacist salaries.

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