Digital transformation of pharmacists' clinical services

This article discusses the technology and business transformation of electronically collecting, documenting, and sharing pharmacists' clinical services. The article discusses the current landscape of pharmacy management systems as it pertains to pharmacy practice and to identify opportunities, benefits, and challenges for pharmacists as providers.

Pharmacists providing clinical services are in the midst of transforming the practice of pharmacy. From a technology standpoint, pharmacy operations must digitally transform their practices to keep up with the rest of health care. Today's pharmacies do a great job of electronically standardizing the prescription dispensing and billing processes; we need to rethink how to document clinical services in a way that makes sense to pharmacists. Digitally transforming pharmacy clinical workflow to fully integrate pharmacist-provided clinical data using nationally recognized standards is not an easy task for pharmacy system vendors. Pharmacy management systems are based on prescription-dispensing process or propriety clinical documentation functions designed to meet customers' or payers' needs. The government and quality-setting organizations play an important role driving digital transformation.

The Joint Commission of Pharmacy Practitioners (JCPP) Pharmacists' Patient Care Process standardized the pharmacists' clinical workflow steps, and it is used as the cornerstone for standardizing pharmacists' electronic clinical workflow within pharmacy systems. Since its founding in 2010, Pharmacy Health Information Technology Collaborative (PHIT) members understood the need to digitally transform pharmacy management systems from prescription focus and build awareness of standardizing pharmacist-provided clinical services and outcomes through the use of the Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine-Clinical Terms and the Pharmacist eCare Plan. The technology is now available for sharing clinical data. Pharmacists and pharmacy operations will need to transform their business models by adopting technology standards outlined in this article to keep up with the rest of the health care industry.