Hospitals and Health Networks (H&HN): While some forward-looking hospitals and health systems long ago began to realize the value of the inpatient pharmacy department, new trends may be awakening more hospital and health system executives to the opportunities inherent in elevating pharmacists to roles in clinical care and cost control. The move to value-based care, with its emphases on quality metrics and care efficiency, is one such trend. Another is the need to keep patients from being “frequent flyers,” who keep rebounding into inpatient care. Also triggering executives’ awareness is a host of new regulations related to medication management. And accreditation organizations, such as the Joint Commission, are far more focused these days on the role medicines play in patient safety. “One of the challenges for the C-suite is to fully understand the full suite of services that the pharmacy provides,"...
