I received an email today from the ASHP PPMI group asking me to take their pre-summit survey. I did, and you should too if you care about the future of pharmacy practice. In addition to the request for survey participation the email included a link to the PPMI practice spotlight, which just so happened to feature Children’s Hospital Central California (CHCC) where I spent a few years working in their pediatric ICU.
The spotlight article talks about CHCC’s use of decentralized pharmacists as well as judicious use of automation and technology. While working for CHCC I never stopped to considered whether the practice model we were using was advanced or not. It was simply the model we were using at the time. It occurred to me that most people probably don’t see their practice sites as advanced because everything in front of them appears “normalâ€.
So what makes an acute care pharmacy advanced enough to be considered a model for inclusion in the ASHP PPMI spotlight? I think that is a good question. I looked around the ASHP PPMI site for an answer, but couldn’t find one. I reached out to some friends that are significantly more connected in the pharmacy world than I am, but they didn’t know what the inclusion criteria were either. I can venture a guess based on what I’ve seen in previous spotlight facilities, but it would only be speculation.
Regardless of the criteria used to choose the spotlight facilities, I think it would be a great experience to spend some time in all of them to see how they do things. I maintain that there are always smarter, more experienced and harder working people out there doing things better than anyone else. Those are the people I want to talk to. Perhaps ASHP can figure out a way to make a pharmacist exchange program work. You know, I go to your facility to learn your system and you send one of your pharmacists to our facility. What could go wrong?