Factors influencing primary care organization commitment to technical assistance for pharmacist clinical services...

Area of Science:

• Health Services Research
• Implementation Science
• Pharmacy Practice

Background:

• Technical assistance (TA) is commonly used for electronic health records and medical home recognition in primary care organizations (PCOs).
• Limited understanding exists regarding PCOs' utilization of TA for optimizing pharmacist clinical services and integration into team-based care or population health programs.
• A 2019 initiative provided no-cost TA to 9 PCOs to enhance pharmacist clinical services, funded by the Connecticut Office of Health Strategy's State Innovation Model Program.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify organizational, operational, and pharmacist-specific factors influencing PCO commitment to a technical assistance (TA) program.
• To understand the drivers of engagement for primary care organizations (PCOs) in initiatives aimed at advancing pharmacist clinical services.

Main Methods:

• Data were collected from PCO demographic information, leadership discussions, workflow observations, and pharmacist coaching sessions.
• Configurational comparative methods, including Coincidence Analysis (cna) in R, were used to analyze the data.
• Thirteen candidate factors were iteratively assessed and calibrated to determine their influence on PCO commitment to the TA program.

Main Results:

• Four out of nine PCOs committed to participating in the technical assistance (TA) program.
• The presence of a hired pharmacist was the sole factor that consistently distinguished PCOs committed to the TA program from those that were not.
• This factor demonstrated 100% coverage and 80% consistency among the committed PCOs.

Conclusions:

• Primary care organization (PCO) commitment to technical assistance (TA) for advancing pharmacist clinical services is strongly associated with the prior hiring of a pharmacist.
• These findings can guide future strategies for engaging PCOs in TA initiatives and informing primary care policy.
• Further research is needed to fully understand the factors contributing to successful pharmacist clinical service integration within PCOs.