QueensCare Clinical Pharmacy Recognized at National HRSA Conference

QueensCare Family Clinics has had a successful clinical pharmacy program for over five years. The initiation and development of our program was the topic of a ‘breakout session’ 1 at a national conference sponsored by the Health Resources Service Administration’s (HRSA) Patient Safety and Clinical Pharmacy Collaborative. Assistant CMO, Dr. Guillermo Diaz and Clinical Pharmacist, Cecilia Wu, PharmD represented QFC during the May 12th, 2010 conference held in our capital, Washington D.C. The conference was broadcast via the internet to several host sites and also viewed by numerous individuals from hospitals, clinics, and pharmacies across the nation.
The aim of the Patient Safety and Clinical Pharmacy Collaborative is to bring together organizations across the country who have, or are interested in starting, clinical pharmacy services to provide healthcare that improves health outcomes and increases medication and patient safety through interdisciplinary healthcare teams. Many of these organizations also care for underserved, often uninsured patient populations as QFC does. The data collected from the collaborative will help expand support and legislation that recognizes the importance of reimbursement for clinical pharmacist services.
QFC’s clinical pharmacy program started in 2004 through a collaboration with the USC School of Pharmacy. QueensCare provided a grant that supported a full-time pharmacist, Sally Hur-Lu, PharmD who initiated medication therapy management services to high risk, uncontrolled diabetic patients. Significant improved health outcomes from the initial program, as well as, increased cost savings to the clinics through utilization of the clinical pharmacist’s drug expertise provided fuel to expand the program to a second full-time pharmacist, in addition to a full-time Resident Pharmacist training program.
Currently, QFC supports three full-time clinical pharmacists who rotate through multiple sites in our clinic system. They provide a variety of services including managing our most difficult chronic diseases (ex: diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular diseases), providing medication counseling, improving our clinic’s medication safety protocols, and playing an active part in administrative support of utilizing our medication resources cost-effectively.

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