Approved by the ASHP Board of Directors, May 17, 2011.
The five items in the Leadership Agenda are ASHP's top professional priorities. Listed below each item is the rationale that led ASHP to select it for attention, followed by some of the key tactics that ASHP is pursuing to address the issue. Detailed action plans are developed for all of the primary tactics, and the Board of Directors regularly reviews progress to ensure that adequate resources, creativity, and assertiveness are being applied to each area.
1. Ensure that pharmacists are leaders in implementing all medication-related changes to the health care delivery system.
Rationale
- The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 create opportunities for pharmacists to improve the safety and quality of medication use as members of interdisciplinary patient-care teams.
- Changes to the payment system for hospitals and providers will enhance the capabilities of pharmacists to bring value to patients and the health care delivery system.
- There is an urgent need to address issues related to the pharmacist and pharmacy technician workforces.
Primary ASHP tactics
- Work assertively to influence governmental and health-system implementation strategies for pharmacy-related provisions in The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act.
- Help pharmacists understand and take advantage of the opportunities in The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act to help patients achieve better medication therapy outcomes, and to make the medication-use process more efficient and cost effective.
- Seek opportunities to align the patient-care services of pharmacists with current and emerging provider and hospital payment and health-care delivery systems.
- Foster the expansion of accredited pharmacy residency training and accredited pharmacy technician training programs, and other pharmacy workforce-related initiatives.
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2. Foster optimal models for team-based, patient-centered care that include pharmacists as the experts in medication therapy management.
Rationale
- The choice pharmacy department leaders make in deploying their human and technology resources should be designed to serve the greatest patient-care needs.
- Patients who need the medication therapy management services of pharmacists often do not have access to those services.
- There is an imperative for hospital and health-system pharmacists to lead efforts to optimize practice models to better serve patients.
Primary ASHP tactics
- Encourage hospital and health-system pharmacy departments to evaluate and optimize their practice models (deployment of resources, including how pharmacists and technicians spend their time), and provide information and advice on how to conduct such assessments.
- Encourage research on optimal pharmacy practice models in various types of hospital and health-system settings.
- Improve awareness of the patient-care capabilities of pharmacists among health professionals, health executives, public policy makers, and the general public.
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3. Influence the development and implementation of health information technologies and standards that help improve patient-care outcomes through the leadership of pharmacists.
Rationale
- Implementation of health information technologies is consuming immense resources in hospital and health-system pharmacy practice.
- The promise of future health information technologies is that continuous analysis of patient care data will lead to improved patient-care practices and outcomes.
- Significant leadership will be required by ASHP and its members to realize the promise of future health information technologies related to medication use in hospitals and health systems.
Primary ASHP tactics
- Assertively advise health information technology stakeholders on the development of health information technology standards that foster safe and evidence-based use of medications.
- Provide guidance to health-system pharmacists on major issues related to the selection, implementation, maintenance, and management of health information technologies.
- Foster the development of a cadre of pharmacists who are well prepared to collaborate in the development, implementation, and optimization of health information technologies related to medication use.
- Ensure that ASHP's drug information expertise is applied in the development of clinical decision support and data analysis systems related to medication use.
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4. Increase the influence of pharmacy leaders in hospitals and health systems.
Rationale
- Leadership drives change and improvement in all aspects of the medication-use process, from frontline practice to executive functions.
- If the leadership abilities of all pharmacists are nurtured, more pharmacists will be prepared to assume greater responsibility for management and leadership in all facets of the medication-use process.
- The talents required for effective leadership of the pharmacy department are not well understood by hospital and health-system executives.
Primary ASHP tactics
- Support robust and multifaceted leadership-development programs.
- Recognize and celebrate the leadership achievements of health-system pharmacists in all facets of the medication-use process.
- Highlight the benefits of careers in pharmacy department management and leadership.
- Inform hospital and health-system executives of the breadth and depth of knowledge, skills, and abilities required to effectively lead the pharmacy department; develop a system to help them identify pharmacists who have this competency; and encourage them to include their lead pharmacist in their executive group.
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5. Promote pharmacists as the health care professionals who are accountable for the medication-therapy outcomes of patients.
Rationale
- Accountability refers to the obligation of one party to provide a justification and to be held responsible for its actions by another interested party (Emmanuel, 1996).
- The complexity of medication use creates the demand for a health care professional who is educated, trained, licensed, and credentialed to help patients achieve optimal medication therapy outcomes, and to ensure that the medication-use system is safe.
- The pharmacist-patient relationship is the covenant that holds pharmacists to account for medication therapy outcomes, and pharmacists have a responsibility to uphold that covenant as members of the interdisciplinary patient-care team.
Primary ASHP tactics
- Define "accountability" in pharmacy practice from a social, legal, ethical, and professional perspective, and translate that definition into a series of actions, including the creation of pharmacy practice models that embrace the tenets of accountability for hospital and health-system pharmacists.
- Ensure that patient-safety, quality-improvement, and health care professional organizations consider the roles health-system pharmacists play in fostering safe and evidence-based use of medications in a patient-centered, team-based, and accountable fashion.
- Support the development and adoption of nationally standardized performance measures for medication use and pharmacy practice built on the principle that pharmacists are accountable for the medication therapy outcomes of patients.
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