Cardiovascular Health
Loren Bonner
Pharmacists now have an additional tool, the Community-Clinical Linkages for Cardiovascular Health (CCL-CVD) checklist, to help them build relationships with physicians and other community partners to improve cardiovascular health for their patients.
The three-item checklist was published online on April 10 in the Journal of the American Pharmacists Association (JAPhA).
“Building relationships with community partners can be time-intensive and even overwhelming when considering all of the responsibilities of a community pharmacist,” wrote researchers in an e-mail interview with Pharmacy Today.
“We started with a list of nine community engagement strategies, derived from CDC guides and other literature, which in and of itself is overwhelming. By the end of the study, a list of three essential strategies, ranked by content experts, was created.”
The research team, led by Whitney Thurman, PhD, RN, from the University of Texas at Austin College of Pharmacy, added that these strategies can serve as a practical starting point for community pharmacists interested in strengthening relationships with health care providers in their community.
Three strategies
In the study, three strategies from the initial checklist reached statistical significance and were considered essential for community pharmacists to use when developing partnerships.
These strategies include gathering data to support the need for pharmacists’ services, identifying preferred communication strategies, and creating a mechanism for documentation and data collection (see sidebar).
Eleven community pharmacy content experts completed the survey for a response rate of 73%. The respondents had an average of 14.5 years of practice experience, and most worked in academia as clinical faculty. Five respondents practiced in a community pharmacy setting.
The authors of the study noted that the small sample size is a limitation to consider as well as the fact that most respondents practiced in urban areas. “The results are primarily representative of pharmacists in faculty roles and may not be generalizable to community pharmacists in very rural areas,” they wrote.
Big picture
In 2017, CDC’s Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention, in collaboration with APhA and the American Medical Association, published a guide on establishing “linkages” between community pharmacists and physicians. The Linkage Framework, outlined in the guide, provides specific steps for community pharmacists on ways to begin working together with physicians.
According to the JAPhA study authors, their findings are complementary to the CDC guide and provide context for community engagement strategies that should be prioritized by community pharmacists. They also said their checklist can easily be applied to other chronic conditions, like diabetes.
The work continues
The JAPhA study is part of a larger, ongoing project, which is a collaboration between the University of Texas at Austin College of Pharmacy and the Texas Department of State Health Services, with funding from CDC.
“We are using the study findings to create a toolkit, with input from Texas community pharmacists, that can be used to implement these strategies,” said the study authors.
For example, with the first strategy—gather data to support need for pharmacist services—they are using existing tools that are publicly available, such as county health rankings, and creating a how-to guide for pharmacists to quickly access data. This could be the prevalence of hypertension at the county level, for example, and could engage physicians in cardiovascular medication therapy management opportunities. “We are piloting the toolkit and expect to implement it in community pharmacies across Texas,” they said.
Essential strategies with details
1. Gathering data to support the need for pharmacists’ services
Potential data sources:
- State or local health departments
- Interviews/discussions with local health care providers or community leaders
2. Identifying preferred communication strategies and processes
Examples:
- Communication strategies to share blood pressure measurements or summary of MTM visits with providers
- Processes for conducting referrals
3. Creating a mechanism for documentation and data collection and establishing an evaluation plan, including process and short- and long-term outcome measures
Examples of measures:
- Process measures, such as number of blood pressure screenings performed
- Outcome measures, such as number of patients with blood pressure in target range