Community Pharmacies Help Enhance Patient Access, Education | PQA 2025
A conversation with Kaitlin Bates, PharmD, ARHOME Quality Manager at Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield, at PQA 2025.
As value-based payment arrangements between payers and pharmacies continue to grow, the Pharmacy Quality Alliance (PQA) developed a program that established standardized pharmacy quality measures to help ensure they work effectively. The program incorporated 4 different quality measures: 2 blood pressure and 2 HbA1c concepts. By leveraging the unique position of pharmacies in local communities, it aimed to enhance medication adherence and patient outcomes.1
In 2023, Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield was selected to take part in the national pilot program, which included Medicaid and Medicare patients. In the program, pharmacists are encouraged to integrate targeted patient identification into their workflow, using alerts and staff collaboration to identify and support individuals with diabetes. The program seeks to address healthcare gaps and reach patients who might not regularly see their provider by empowering pharmacists to play a more active role in patient care.
At the PQA 2025 Annual Meeting, held May 19 to 21 in Tampa, Florida, Drug Topics® sat down with Kaitlin Bates, PharmD, ARHOME Quality Manager at Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield, to discuss key findings from the program, what types of data or metrics are most helpful for pharmacies in tracking progress and demonstrating value in diabetes care initiatives, and what ways community pharmacies can integrate diabetes management into their existing workflows without disrupting daily operations.
“We really value the pharmacists’ place in the community,” Bates said. “We believe that pharmacists increase access to care for those difficult to reach members that might not go to the provider often. We want to leverage pharmacies to provide that education that's needed to then point our members to the providers to get increased quality of care.”
Be sure to follow all of our coverage from PQA 2025 here.
