Drug Topics - February 2009 - (Page 60)

VIEWPOINT The value of a Pharmacist Risk Manager Ken Baker, BS, PharmD, JD Recently, in a lecture before a group of pharmacy students, I asked them to imagine they had successfully graduated and were arriving at their ﬁrst job. The new boss gives them their ﬁrst assignment — to design a workﬂow plan signiﬁcantly reducing the number of medication errors. The boss tells them the goal of their new plan for the pharmacy should be zero errors. The students and I then discussed how they could design such a plan and how valuable the students would be if they succeeded. I asked them how much more money they would be worth if they could set up a program that could stop just one $50,000 claim from occurring. A trained, experienced pharmacist risk manager has real value. It is now possible for a pharmacist to receive that kind of risk-management training. Currently, a handful of pharmacy schools offer advanced training in risk management. Within its Master of Science in Pharmacy program, the University of Florida is offering a part-time online major in patient safety and risk management. This master’s level degree program is particularly designed to provide students with the knowledge, skills, and ability to develop comprehensive clinical risk-management and patient-safety programs. According to David Brushwood, program director for the University of Florida’s Masters of Science in Pharmacy curriculum, the university was responding to student demand for a major in patient safety. “This major provides students with the opportunity to enter the growing ﬁeld of healthcare risk management,” he said. Many states require pharmacies to implement continuous quality improvement programs as part of their prescription workﬂow. Even more states are considering such legislation. Within a few years, every community and hospital pharmacy in the United States will be developing, implementing, modifying, or using risk-management systems designed to reduce medication errors and improve patient safety. The demand for trained experts in the ﬁeld of risk management will grow to meet the need. Their value will correspondingly increase. As state boards of pharmacy realize that merely having a quality-assurance plan is not enough, the value of a trained risk manager will become more apparent. Regulators, pharmacy and hospital executives, insurance companies, and patients will demand that every pharmacy have a system that not only Ken Baker is a pharmacist and an attorney with the Arizona law ﬁrm of Renaud Cook Drury Mesaros, PA. Contact him at ken@ kenbakerconsulting.com. W W W.D R U GTO P I C S .C O M 60 DRUG TOPICS Februar y 2009 COURTESY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA can reduce the number of medication errors, but actually reduces claims and embarrassing situations. Quality judged by outcomes will become the norm. This will force the profession to recognize the need for specialists trained to design, implement, and continuously improve healthcare delivery. In the last several years, proﬁt margins have decreased while demands for services have increased. Prescription volume has multiplied; pharmacists and pharmacy technicians have been ﬁlling more prescriptions while the number of available staff has remained constant. It is not surprising medication errors and pharmacy malpractice claims have increased, along with demands for quality solutions. The University of Florida’s timing is excellent, and it is not alone in its efforts to train specialists in risk management and patient safety. Temple University School of Pharmacy has a certiﬁcate program for pharmacists and a masters program that trains experts, primarily for the pharmaceutical industry. St. Johns University and Purdue University also have programs that emphasize quality assurance in the pharmacy industry. I have to admit some prejudice, as I teach online courses in the University of Florida Masters in Science programs, including in its patient-safety and risk-management major. All these universities, however, are top pharmacy schools and pharmacists would do well to look at all of them. Anyone interested in more information should visit the schools’ websites. For the University of Florida Masters program, information can be found at http://pharmreg.dce.uﬂ.edu/, or pharmacists can contact the program director, Professor David Brushwood, at brushwood@cop.uﬂ.edu. They may also contact me at ken@ kenbakerconsulting.com. I will try to be objective. http://pharmreg.dceufl.edu http://WWW.DRUGTOPICS.COM

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Drug Topics - February 2009 Contents Health-System Edition Group Attempts to Resurrect Pain Care Act HSE Business Management HSE Clinical Letters Up Front Up Front in Depth Community Practice Niche Pharmacies Serve Special Populations Special Report Oral Oncology Drugs New Drugs Update 2008 Approvals OTC New Products Viewpoint

Drug Topics - February 2009

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