Strategic Planning
Olivia C. Welter, PharmD
Each year, the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) Foundation releases the Pharmacy Forecast, which looks ahead at large-scale trends that may impact the profession over the course of several years. The report focuses on several key themes in each edition. This year, themes included value, access, disparity, equity, resilience, agility, and preparedness.
To make the forecast, pharmacy leaders across the country are surveyed on topics related to pharmacy, and the results are compiled and analyzed. Its intended purpose is to serve as a springboard for strategic planning and to get pharmacy teams talking about how such trends could influence their own practice(s).
Forecast themes
The authors noted that the themes in the 2022 report are perhaps more abstract than those the forecast typically features. Previous themes have been more technical, clinical, and/or financial in nature, but the forecast pivoted this year because roles of pharmacy leaders have evolved.
The introduction states that proficiency in technical and financial topics is no longer sufficient for the changing pharmacy landscape, and that the profession needs a more complete understanding of the social environments involved in pharmacy practice.
Each discussion on the individual or grouped themes yielded several recommendations listed in the forecast for pharmacy teams to consider. Below are just a few that stand out.
Value
Value is a term that has variable interpretations depending on the definer. The forecast emphasizes that value can be measured at several levels: global, system, and patient.
Each level may view value in a different way and therefore present different expectations for patient care and in which health care tools and strategies leaders should invest. Pharmacists included in the ASHP Foundation survey saw so much value in their services that two-thirds predicted pharmacists will be recognized as providers by CMS within the next 5 years.
Recommendations related to value include growing the amount and visibility of pharmacist informaticists’ work to demonstrate the merit of pharmacy services to health systems, expanding clinical privileging for pharmacy staff in preparation for independent provider authority, and integrating digital solutions for patient care at an accelerated pace.
Access, disparities, and equity
Pharmacy educators and advocates have been thinking about the themes of access, disparities, and equity for years, but the COVID-19 pandemic created a more urgent need to address them. Two-thirds of surveyed pharmacists for the report said they do not believe that health insurance coverage will be expanded to the entire U.S. population by 2026, meaning there will still be an access gap standing between patients and the needed health care services.
However, 87% of pharmacists do expect that health disparities will successfully be addressed through partnerships between health-systems and community organizations. Pharmacists’ optimism and cynicism on these themes strike a balance.
Recommendations related to access, disparities, and equity include having a strategic plan that emphasizes the pharmacist’s role in transitions of care to ensure patients are discharged with affordable and reasonable care plans, encouraging pharmacist engagement with health plans to continue establishing value-based care models, and advocating for permenantly implemented policy changes in pharmacists’ scope of practice.
Preparedness, agility, and resilience
The COVID-19 pandemic’s influence carries into the themes of preparedness, agility, and resilience. If nothing else, the pandemic has demonstrated that emergency preparedness needs to be a focal point at all levels of health care moving forward. In fact, 86% of pharmacists indicated to ASHP Foundation that they anticipate pharmacists will be integral partners in both regional and national emergency preparedness planning.
Preparedness paves the way for agility, at least in the minds of two-thirds of pharmacist respondents to the ASHP Foundation survey. These pharmacists expect that a majority of health systems will create “right-size” policies in the next 5 years that allow for quick flexibility in staff sizes to fulfill needs associated with unexpected shifts in patient volume.
Recommendations related to preparedness, agility, and resilience include promoting pharmacist engagement in interdisciplinary health care teams at all levels, engaging in relationships with distributors that will maintain a stable pharmacy supply chain, and using data analytics and other health technology to optimize patient outcomes.
Other topics for consideration
While the main themes of the forecast are discussed above, several other topics were touched on throughout the publication, including dialogue associated with workforce and staffing issues, readiness for change, and innovation and technology, among others.
Pharmacy teams can read the full pharmacy forecast at apha.us/ASHPForecast2022 and reflect on its contents during strategic planning processes. ■