[Medical homes and poles including pharmacists: An inventory]

The current restructuring of primary healthcare aims toward the creation of coordinated practices, which involves new roles for pharmacists. The objectives of this study were to identify all the French multidisciplinary medical homes and poles (MMHs and MMPs) with pharmacists currently active, and to describe how they are organized and operate.

This study focused on metropolitan MMHs and MMPs, active during the second semester of 2013, which include one or several pharmacists. These centers were identified through information provided by French regional health authorities (Agences régionales de santé, ARS) and the French medical homes medical poles federation (Fédération française des maisons et pôles de santé). Data were collected via an electronic questionnaire.

Pharmacists were active in 60 centers in total, namely 35 MMHs and 25 MMPs. These were mostly set up as sociétés interprofessionnelles de soins ambulatoires (SISA, a type of company), with the help of government funding, typically from the ARS, in buildings owned by local government agencies. Pharmacists were systematically invited to attend interprofessional meetings held in the MMHs and MMPs, and multimodal treatment protocols were often in place. Pharmacists had no access to shared clerical services in MMHs, and rarely in MMPs, and their access to medical records was inconsistent in the two types of structures.

Pharmacists are currently active in nearly one in four MMHs and MMPs but are still only partially integrated therein.