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Published on: February 16, 2011
Leadership versus management: translating pharmacists' abilities into quality performance
1College of Pharmacy, Department of Pharmaceutical and Health Outcomes Sciences, University of South Carolina, Columbia 29208, USA. reeder@pharm.sc.edu
Objective:
To describe the quality gap in health care as it was referred to in the Institute of Medicine's reports, to try to harness pharmacy's potential to improve the quality of drug therapy, and to provide insight into the elusive leadership, management, and dynamics of change.
Summary:
Current health care is nowhere near ideal. Successful quality initiatives have included establishing a "culture of quality" (promoting a learning organization), having good leadership, and developing strong management. Ideally, all of these concepts must be applied concurrently for the best results because using only one will not spirit medicine across the gap. To close the gap, pharmacists need to understand various types of change and select a change mechanism that will continuously improve care.
Conclusion:
Optimizing drug therapy is both a great challenge and a great opportunity for pharmacy. AMCP's Framework for Quality Drug Therapy is a continuous quality improvement model that gives us the tools to plan, implement, and evaluate strategies to improve the quality of patient care and cross the "quality chasm."
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