How Pharmacies Can Effectively Transition to a Wellness-Focused Model

At the American Associated Pharmacies (AAP) Annual Conference, held April 4 to 6 in San Diego, California, Kathy Campbell, PharmD, pharmacist and patient advocate at Medicap Pharmacy in Owassa, Oklahoma, and CEO of DrKathy Health, sat down with Drug Topics to talk about some obstacles pharmacies may face when transitioning to a wellness-focused approach and how they can overcome them, as well as how pharmacies can communicate and engage with their communities to promote the adoption of proactive health behaviors and wellness initiatives.

“The big 3 obstacles that I know I’ve had to overcome and assist others in overcoming, I’ve got broken down into identity, who as a pharmacy do you see yourself as,” Campbell said. “Is it a dispensing model? And granted, that’s part of it. Or is it a clinical, proactive, consultation model? So, the identity of pharmacy as a profession and the pharmacist is something that they really have to identify.”

The second obstacle that Campbell said pharmacies may face when transitioning is inertia. Campbell said that inertia can take many shapes, such as being consumed by day to day tasks or the cash flow of filling more and more prescriptions. She added that this inertia can get pharmacists stuck and it’s important to take a critical look at how to change the model.

“The third one [and the one] that’s probably hardest for me is isolation,” Campbell said. “I’m not an independent pharmacist, I’m an isolated pharmacist. A lot of pharmacists are a little introverted and we tend to, or at least I tend to, just try and make it work and often don’t seek help outside of myself, outside of my business…So, if you want to break out of that, you often have to collaborate, both for the health of our business, and also for the health of our patients or ourselves.”

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