Highlights from the 2022 Trend Report in Pharmacy Quality

The PQS Quality Corner Show welcomes back PQS Senior Manager of Data Analytics Andrew Thorne, PharmD, MS, to talk about findings from the 2022 Trend Report in Pharmacy Quality.
Highlighted topics include patient comfort levels on receiving new services at a pharmacy and whether pharmacists and pharmacy organizations are ready to embrace new services and value-based payment models. 
Thorne also addresses how likely health plans are to contract with pharmacies  to provide reimbursement and structure for point of care testing in the pharmacy.

Download the PQS Trend Report in Pharmacy Quality

Chapters

• 1:49 Introduction
• 6:43 Patient Comfort in Receiving New Services at a Pharmacy
• 16:07 Are Pharmacists Ready to Embrace New Services and Value-Based Programs?
• 21:44 What Does Improving Patient Health Outcomes Mean for that Payer-Provider Relationship?
• 30:15 Closing

Transcript

00:00:01:17 - 00:00:35:04
Speaker 1
I think you're hitting it on the head here. The survey absolutely confirmed that both groups, pharmacies and health plans are ready and willing to enter into these arrangements. But for that to work and for it to be sustainable, it has to be beneficial to both groups and patients have to engage with it. Personally, I think the best way to do that is to make sure that the data is the data collected in the pharmacy is a very high quality and can be ingested into a health plans, he decision to count towards their star ratings and that will then provide the value back to the health plan.

00:00:35:15 - 00:00:54:03
Speaker 1
The health plans have told us that they're willing to provide compensation to pharmacies for data that helps to close existing data gaps or to help patients that may be out of range for their blood pressure or have a too high A1 c to help intervene and bring those numbers under control.

00:00:55:23 - 00:01:20:16
Speaker 2
Welcome to the Pharmacy Quality Solutions Quality Corner show where quality measurement leads to better patient outcomes. This show will be your go to source for all things related to quality improvement and medication use and health care. We will hit on trending topics as they relate to performance measurements and find common ground for payers and practitioners. We will discuss how the platform can help you with your performance goals.

00:01:21:01 - 00:01:44:16
Speaker 2
We will also make sure to keep you up to date on pharmacy quality news. Please note that the topics discussed are based on the information available at the date and time of reporting. Information or guidelines are updated periodically and we will always recommend that our listeners research and review any guidelines that are newly published. Buckle up and put your thinking cap on the Quality Corner show starts now.

00:01:57:06 - 00:02:21:21
Speaker 3
Hello Quality Corner Show listeners. Welcome to the Peaks podcast, where we focus on medication, use, quality improvement and how we can utilize pharmacists to improve patient health outcomes. I'm your host, Nick Dortch. This episode is bringing back a familiar guest and topic to the show. Each year. The data analytics team here at Peak US releases our annual trend report in medication use quality.

00:02:21:21 - 00:02:52:06
Speaker 3
There are plenty of resources in the wide world that focus on medication trends, but no one focuses on medication use quality like we do our team at PCU has worked with some fantastic resources and external perspectives to address some of the most important questions and pertinent questions about improving medication use. This drives to the core about who and what we are as a company, measuring quality and informing the larger community about potential opportunities for further involvement of the pharmacy team.

00:02:53:04 - 00:03:11:02
Speaker 3
Now, without further ado, I can introduce our returning guests to the Quality Corner show. This is my colleague, Dr. Andy Thorne, Senior Manager, Data Analytics at PQS. Andy, welcome back to the show and how have you been since your last appearance on the podcast?

00:03:11:18 - 00:03:20:07
Speaker 1
Thanks, Nick. Happy to be here. I'm doing well. Gotten through the holidays, days are getting longer, looking forward to conferences, etc. in the spring, through the summer. It's going be good here.

00:03:20:16 - 00:03:39:09
Speaker 3
I definitely appreciate that. It is light outside after 5 p.m. and we're getting away from that winter solstice. Definitely a big advantage and things that I'm enjoying now. Andy, before we get into the episode for today, we need to know about you and you have been on the show before as a member of the Peaks Team, but maybe folks haven't listened to that episode.

00:03:39:09 - 00:03:50:11
Speaker 3
If you haven't, go back and find Andy's prior episode. But Andy, do you mind giving us an updated perhaps background on your career in health care and then what you do today?

00:03:50:22 - 00:04:12:12
Speaker 1
Not at all. You mentioned I'll keep it a little bit brief because we have done this before. My background is a pharmacist. I after pharmacy, did some residency training in both clinical experiences and management and leadership, and from there I worked as a manager in a clinical trials pharmacy for a few years before coming to PQS quality and medication safety.

00:04:12:12 - 00:04:30:18
Speaker 1
Patient safety has been a passion of mine for a long time, so our work here at PEAKS has really scratches that itch. For me, What I do here at the company is, as you mentioned, I'm senior manager for data analytics. Data analytics is one of the three major hats that I wear. Another is to be our resident measure expert, subject matter expert.

00:04:30:18 - 00:04:54:14
Speaker 1
So a lot of the questions around measure aspects come to me and I keep an eye on those updating measure specs. And then additionally I work on things like the Trend report and we're trying to do some other scholarly work with the dataset that we have here at PQS as well, very related to the analytics work, but it also gives a little bit of a little bit of shine to that work and some things that we can also push externally in addition to the internal analytics that we do.

00:04:55:02 - 00:05:16:02
Speaker 3
Excellent. Thank you. And I'll note for our audience, I am particularly excited to have Andy on the show and have Andy as a teammate. We are often focused or thinking about talking about community pharmacy practice, and Andy, I won't I won't go into specifics here, right, But it's been a while since you spent some time working in a community, maybe during your APPE hours.

00:05:16:09 - 00:05:37:11
Speaker 3
Yeah, that's right. As as a student pharmacist. But that's not a bad thing, right? We're talking about some specific items in community pharmacy. While we are focused on that group in that community, it's important to have other viewpoints, other experts coming in. And Andy comes from a lot of great experience working in a hospital health system, setting leadership development.

00:05:37:11 - 00:06:00:23
Speaker 3
A lot of our conversations outside of just medication issues between myself and Andy are actually on how do we empower teammates and things like that where they may not necessarily be set to just a community pharmacy setting, right? Those are things that are applicable to any kind of setting. So that's just kind of my plug for anyone out there to open your horizons when it comes to pharmacy into health care sticker ourselves outside of our bubbles a little bit.

00:06:00:23 - 00:06:12:18
Speaker 3
But Andy, excited to have you here today. We're going to jump into the questions in just a second right after we hear a couple of notes from our friends at the PQS team.

00:06:12:18 - 00:06:36:18
Speaker 2
Now it's time for the breakdown as quality corner show host little as three main topic questions. Our guests will have a chance to respond and there will be some discussion to summarize the key points. This process worksheet for the second and third questions, which will wrap up the primary content for this, the 40 after that, expect to end on a closing summary, usually containing a bonus question.

00:06:37:08 - 00:06:43:04
Speaker 2
Now that we've described the process, let's jump into the questions.

00:06:43:04 - 00:07:04:08
Speaker 3
All right, Andy, we're ready to begin today's conversation. And what we're talking about is the peak usage trend report. Right. And we've gone through several iterations of this now. But I want us to start there's really three different ideas to the trend report patients pharmacy's pharmacy as pharmacist, as providers and then the payer the managed care perspective of this.

00:07:05:01 - 00:07:34:15
Speaker 3
Let's begin like everything should with health care. Let's begin and start with the patient perspective. So because of the COVID pandemic in the recent years and the Prep Act, pharmacist and pharmacy technicians have been provided with additional authority, albeit in many cases temporary, to provide additional services beyond the traditional medication dispensing that occurs at a pharmacy. This is something we looked into and from the latest trend report and patient survey.

00:07:34:24 - 00:07:42:09
Speaker 3
How exactly are patients feeling about receiving services, new services at a pharmacy setting?

00:07:42:15 - 00:08:01:03
Speaker 1
That's a great question. The Trend report to give us some insight on this. Patients are telling us that they're willing to utilize more services at their pharmacies than they are currently utilizing, but additionally, they're also utilizing those services to take a little bit of a step back and give just a brief primer on what the trend report is.

00:08:01:12 - 00:08:21:22
Speaker 1
This is something that we've undertaken at PQS since 2019, and the typical format of it is three surveys. As you mentioned, one of consumers want a pharmacy groups and the other of health plans of payers, and we asked different questions of those groups, but we've asked very similar questions over the three years in 2019, 2020 and 2022 that we've done these surveys.

00:08:21:22 - 00:08:40:19
Speaker 1
So that gives us a little bit of ability to trend over those questions First, and absolutely appropriately, we're talking about the patient perspective. First, to give a brief summary. Now, I could go on and on about this for a long time because we put a lot of effort into this trend report, and this will be the first time that I will plug of many throughout this conversation and go read it.

00:08:40:19 - 00:09:13:16
Speaker 1
It's on the peak up website from the consumer survey. One of the major lessons we learned is that patients are comfortable or they're telling us that they're comfortable with their pharmacist, working with their provider and with receiving testing in the pharmacy on the side of working the pharmacist, working, making clinical interventions with their provider. Roughly two thirds of patients said that they are comfortable with their pharmacist working with their provider to do two things to change their medications when called for or to change the dosing of their medications when that's called for in a clinical setting.

00:09:13:19 - 00:09:42:17
Speaker 1
These are things that a pharmacist as well trained and especially a lot of community pharmacies, pharmacists who have been doing this for a long time, they see a lot of the same situations over and over and are very well equipped and it's top of mind to be able to to help with some of these clinical interventions in 2020 to be crossed the threshold where more than half of consumer respondents said that they would receive a vaccine or that they had received a vaccine in a pharmacy within the last 12 months.

00:09:43:01 - 00:10:02:13
Speaker 1
You brought up COVID, you brought up the Prep Act. This was not a real surprise for us that there was more there were more consumers taking advantage of vaccination offerings in a pharmacy in 2022. But it was really cool to see that more than half of the consumers that we surveyed had received a vaccine in a pharmacy in the last 12 months.

00:10:02:22 - 00:10:33:22
Speaker 1
And similarly, when we drill down a little bit into those responses and we ask follow up questions, two thirds of patients said that they would be comfortable receiving injections from a pharmacist. So just higher than 50% have received a vaccine in the past 12 months, but two thirds are saying that they'd be comfortable with that. And even a layer deeper with a cross tab of those patients And some other questions, It showed that half of patients who have never received a vaccine at a pharmacy, who have never received the vaccine at a pharmacy, they said that they would be comfortable getting an injection from a pharmacist.

00:10:34:07 - 00:10:56:16
Speaker 1
So despite the fact that we have greater than 50% who have gotten a vaccination, there's even more patients out there who are telling us that they would be comfortable to receive those things. Some of them may not have been aware that it's happening, that awareness is is getting a lot better over time. But sometimes it just needs a little bit of prompting from the pharmacist to offer those services, make sure patients know that they are there.

00:10:56:19 - 00:11:18:12
Speaker 1
And then finally, one of the most impactful results to me was the fact that when we asked consumers how likely they would be to have a pharmacist perform, perform a variety of testing in the pharmacy, all of those tests got greater than 50% responses from patients that they would receive those tests in the pharmacy far and away the highest percentage was blood pressure screening.

00:11:18:12 - 00:11:54:14
Speaker 1
So very noninvasive patients are typically aware that you can get your blood pressure taken in a pharmacy that was around 85% of patients said that they would get their blood pressure taken. Other tests that were well over 50% were things like A1c  screenings, cholesterol point of care testing, etc.. So it was it was cool to see from this survey that we are trending upward in terms of consumer utilization of these services in a pharmacy and we're trending even beyond that higher in the number of patients who are telling us that they would utilize these services and that they'd be comfortable doing so.

00:11:55:05 - 00:12:16:11
Speaker 3
Overall, this is great news and I'm going to pause for a moment The key takeaway that I have and I'm not going to reference typically we see year in, year out, there is a Gallup poll on most trusted professions. Pharmacists are often near the top. There is another profession in the health care field nursing that's typically at that top spot.

00:12:16:11 - 00:12:44:12
Speaker 3
Pharmacists used to hold it, pharmacist directed it. And the key question that one of my mentors always used to ask me was, yes, pharmacies are trusted, but what are they trusted to do? And results like this are actually showing that pharmacists are trusted to do more than just dispense the medication. Right? We're being trusted to provide some of these other services, other tests, and really be an actual clinical provider, which to me is what we want to see in here.

00:12:44:21 - 00:12:59:03
Speaker 3
But Andy, there are there are holdouts. There are patients that are still not yet willing. Was there information gathered about why some of these patients may still not feel comfortable about receiving immunizations or other tests at their community pharmacy?

00:12:59:13 - 00:13:26:03
Speaker 1
We did ask about that, and mostly we asked about that in the context of why some patients were uncomfortable with clinical invention interventions from their pharmacist, but also in the setting of injections, etc.. And the major gap we found was one of understanding. Most patients told us most patients who were uncomfortable with those services told us that they were just unaware that their pharmacists were qualified to perform these tasks and to make those clinical interventions.

00:13:26:23 - 00:13:55:04
Speaker 1
So if we can close that knowledge gap, then those patients might join the other a large group of patients that are comfortable with those services. Some patients felt that they, their pharmacist didn't know enough about their individual health to provide such services and to take an aside and at the risk of a possible soap box territory. In this case, I think these patients may not be entirely wrong in the community setting for the pharmacy.

00:13:55:22 - 00:14:21:03
Speaker 1
I think that there are pharmacists who want to know and want to have better access to better information about their patients health. Accessing up to date and accurate health information for patients in a community pharmacy setting has long been a challenge. I think that some pharmacists would likely agree with these patients that had some concern about does my pharmacist holistically know all about my health care to be able to to help with some of these questions?

00:14:21:21 - 00:14:44:06
Speaker 1
Another frequent response we got was that some patients didn't feel they had a relationship with their pharmacist, and this may have been from a group of patients and a lot of it was from a group of patients who don't pick up chronic prescriptions. If you're in your pharmacy only once a year or less, then you probably don't have a relationship with your pharmacist.

00:14:44:19 - 00:15:09:03
Speaker 1
But I know for a lot of patients that have chronic medications that they fill frequently at their local pharmacy with good pharmacists that have established those relationships, we did get some responses from patients on the other side who said that they highly valued their relationship with their pharmacist, particularly through the period of the pandemic, when pharmacists even more than normal became a very accessible health care provider.

00:15:09:09 - 00:15:33:07
Speaker 1
A lot of these responses to me indicate that we have an opportunity to close these gaps through education. If most patients are telling us they're not going to utilize these services in a pharmacy simply because they don't know that a pharmacist can do them, then that's a clear educational opportunity where we can close some of those gaps. Next would be, of course, establishing a meaningful relationship with patients, which in a busy pharmacy may be difficult to do.

00:15:33:18 - 00:15:53:18
Speaker 1
But if you've got patients that you see coming back regularly, frequently you don't know them, you haven't had conversations with them. My experience has been, you know, admittedly not a lot of time in the community setting, but in other settings, in clinical trials, etc. A warm approach to a patient is often met with, with smile and with a conversation.

00:15:54:03 - 00:16:28:01
Speaker 3
Andy That covers us for the the patient perspective, at least at a high level for the report. As you said, folks should go read it themselves and check out more information. But that really explain some of your key takeaways, at least from the patient survey aspect. Let's move along to cover the pharmacy team and admittedly, your response here might be a bit of a generalization, but I want to ask this question of are pharmacists and the pharmacy team, the pharmacy organizations, are they ready to embrace these new services and value based payment models?

00:16:28:19 - 00:16:59:16
Speaker 1
Yes. Is the general answer. More specifically, in the pharmacy survey, we did ask pharmacy organizations to comment on their current approaches to medication quality programs and their readiness for outcomes based measurement or intermediate outcomes based measurement as that may go towards reimbursement as well. They the questions ranged from how quickly they feel that they would be ready to implement these new initiatives all the way to their willingness to contract with health plans.

00:16:59:16 - 00:17:17:03
Speaker 1
If the health plans were to offer those initiatives. And this ranged from the measures outcomes like like we do a lot of peaks down to the offering of services like we talked about in the consumer section with agency screenings, other point of care testing, etc..

00:17:17:24 - 00:17:50:21
Speaker 3
And brace yourselves, winter is ending, but more questions are coming your way when it does relate to these payment models. There can be many different designs, right? We see that in value based care right now for physicians and in hospitals and health systems with CMS. And we see that even in current performance programs where pharmacies participate today. What did our particular survey with the trend report, what did it find about current preferences for design of value based payment models?

00:17:51:02 - 00:17:52:16
Speaker 3
From the pharmacy perspective.

00:17:53:17 - 00:18:19:20
Speaker 1
You're right, there's there's a huge number of possible programs out there, even if we only consider programs that are already in place and not those that are in run in reaction to upcoming changes or proposed programs. So for the survey, what we did is we we bucketed programs into four sections or four overall categories, payment only for services, intermediate outcomes, measures only.

00:18:20:06 - 00:18:55:19
Speaker 1
The third was a mix of intermediate and outcome related measures, and then the final was fully into outcome related measures. Only, which is what I think we would consider fully into value based arrangement territory from 2019 when we first started asking these questions in the first year of the Trend report, turn to the latest report from 2022. We see a consistent shift among the pharmacy organizations toward increased comfort with reimbursed rate being tied to outcomes either at the intermediate outcome level or the outcome related measure level.

00:18:56:14 - 00:19:23:13
Speaker 1
In 2019, only a quarter of the pharmacy groups surveyed were comfortable with any outcome related measures. They were leaning towards payment for services only. And in 2022, we've come to where half of pharmacy respondents were most comfortable with tying their reimbursement to outcome related measures or a mix of outcomes and intermediate outcome measures. If you go to the trend report and read the full thing, there's my second plug.

00:19:24:16 - 00:19:57:15
Speaker 1
There's there's some beautiful graphs that demonstrate this, and you can see the shift very clearly from 2019 through 2020 and then into 2022 when we repeated the survey for the third time to see this shift right. Word on that graph towards comfort for intermediate and outcome related measures. Overall, the data in the survey did show a shift toward value based arrangements and comfort with value based arrangements and an increased comfort level from pharmacies to engaging in in hypothetical value based payment contracts.

00:19:58:01 - 00:20:29:12
Speaker 3
As we go on to this section, Andy, I would remind you that we're about quality, not necessarily quantity of plugs for the trend report, but that was a high quality reference to it. And a quick note for our listeners that may be on the pharmacy side, maybe on the payer side, definitely go and check this out. Right? If you're working with the pharmacy organization, if you're a pharmacist yourself and you're finding that maybe you are uncomfortable with some of these different types of performance contracts where other pharmacies are wanting to see the performance contract go away, ask yourself why.

00:20:29:12 - 00:20:48:24
Speaker 3
And there may be a question as to what are other pharmacies doing or how have they progressed, where I need to step up my pharmacy operations and workflow so that I can be competing with other pharmacies in these areas. On the other side, with the payer community pharmacies are ready to engage, or at least certain pharmacies are ready to engage.

00:20:49:05 - 00:21:13:01
Speaker 3
And there's certainly an aspect they're taking a look at this information to identify how a program that can be designed that is enticing and engaging for a pharmacy that can help improve your health outcomes, your measurements as a health plan in a way that you're going to drive the pharmacy gauge. But this is very much a relationship. There is a give and take that needs to go from that part of it.

00:21:13:14 - 00:21:34:15
Speaker 3
And there's there's this survey and other information really goes a way to show how a path forward can be created that is positive for both parties. But ultimately, here's the important part. It goes back to how both parties are working together to improve the health of that patient that we started the report with. Right, Andy? It's not a shock that it starts with the patient survey as the most important thing.

00:21:35:08 - 00:21:56:07
Speaker 3
Now, I will move this on. And Andy, I know you've already listened to a couple of our episodes here at the beginning of the 2023 year and this third question, it has changed a bit and always focuses on how we define a key item and that's improving patient health outcomes. In this case, we have to talk about it from the health plan or payer perspective.

00:21:56:19 - 00:22:01:24
Speaker 3
So what does improving patient health outcomes mean to that payer provider relationship?

00:22:02:16 - 00:22:27:14
Speaker 1
I won't I won't say that I'm going to encapsulate the whole thing. It probably means a lot of things depending on who's involved and what they're focused on. I know that there are good programs that are happening in our industry specific to what we saw in our Health plan survey as part of the Trend report, health plans shared with us that they're increasingly likely to contract with pharmacies to provide reimbursement and a structure for point of care testing.

00:22:27:14 - 00:22:51:17
Speaker 1
In the pharmacy, there was a full third of health plans that said they would be very likely to enter into such an arrangement, and only 5% said that they would be unlikely to do point of care testing programs with pharmacists. So this is heavily weighted on the side of health plans, wanting to engage with pharmacies and leverage pharmacies as a good way to gather that data.

00:22:51:17 - 00:23:20:20
Speaker 1
This makes a lot of sense to us, you know, both of us pharmacists, when we're thinking about the frequency with which patients are in the pharmacy, compared to a physician's office and offering testing in a pharmacy to a patient could make those tests more accessible and the timing of them more flexible for patients. I think we're getting away from the period in when things were heavy in 2020, early 2021, when it was difficult to get a doctor appointment.

00:23:20:20 - 00:23:48:10
Speaker 1
Thankfully, it's not as bad now, but without an appointment you can walk into the pharmacy and if you're an existing patient, or maybe even not and you have an indication for screening testing, that pharmacy can offer it. And that's quick. That's easy for both parties involved to be able to to be gathering good quality data that's valuable to the patient for preventative care as well as to the health plan.

00:23:49:02 - 00:24:10:10
Speaker 1
When we asked about point of care testing in the pharmacy, in the pharmacy survey as well, as I mentioned that we did, nearly every pharmacy told us that they had capability to do prep blood pressure screenings. Like we said before, it's not invasive and over half of the pharmacies were also capable of performing A1 C cholesterol and other point of care testing.

00:24:10:10 - 00:24:35:13
Speaker 3
Let's cut to the chase and Andy, as we're rounding out this conversation. And I don't want to put words in your mouth necessarily or into those of the health plans, but it sounds like health plans are more likely now than than ever before to contract with pharmacies for testing services with any kind of agreement contract. There are steps that are necessary for each partner to follow.

00:24:35:19 - 00:24:55:08
Speaker 3
So, yes, the health plan will pay pharmacies for these services, but pharmacies may have to do them in a certain way or they may need to document in a certain way. Right. It's not enough that a pharmacist can do a blood pressure right? If it were that easy, we wouldn't be having this conversation here today wouldn't be something that we as pharmacy have been trying to solve for many, many years.

00:24:56:08 - 00:25:02:14
Speaker 3
You, from your perspective, what's the key for the pharmacy teams to be successful with these new arrangements?

00:25:04:03 - 00:25:31:11
Speaker 1
I, I think you're hitting it on the head here. The survey absolutely confirmed that both groups, pharmacies and health plans are ready and willing to enter into these arrangements. But for that to work and for it to be sustainable, it has to be beneficial to both groups and patients have to engage with it. Personally, I think the best way to do that is to make sure that the data is the data collected in the pharmacy is a very high quality and can be ingested into a health plans.

00:25:31:11 - 00:26:03:21
Speaker 1
Heat ascension to count towards their star ratings, and that will then provide the value back to the health plan. The health plans have told us that they're willing to provide compensation to pharmacies for data that helps to close existing data gaps or to help patients that may be out of range for their blood pressure or have a too high agency to help intervene and bring those numbers under control, providing the testing services as good as you mention, taking a blood pressure, letting the patient know if their blood pressure is high, that is of value.

00:26:04:08 - 00:26:30:12
Speaker 1
But for there to be value in that interaction back to the health plan, there does need to be good documentation. That data has to be captured in a way such that it is reliable and can flow through to let other people know that it happened and that it can be relied on to be accurate data. That's how I think these arrangements can be successful and can be beneficial both to the health plan and to the pharmacy and of course to the patient.

00:26:30:12 - 00:26:53:11
Speaker 3
That and a great summary. We've got a lot of work to do as the pharmacy community going forward, and I'm going to move us into our summary. You're off the hot seat for now, but we're going to put you back into the hot seat in just a moment with some other questions. Real quick for our listeners. As Andy had said here, definitely go and check out the trend report.

00:26:53:11 - 00:27:32:17
Speaker 3
Give it a read yourself and you can access it via the US website or specifically that you URL is pharmacy quality e-commerce category slash trend Python report. Go give it a read. We really highlighted some of the key findings here, but there's a lot more information, so be sure to check out all of that detail. I'll summarize the trend report and you can correct me or add more detail to this, but it's one patients are ready to and ready, willing and able to receive services beyond medication dispensing from their local pharmacist to pharmacists.

00:27:32:17 - 00:27:56:10
Speaker 3
And the pharmacy organizations are ready and willing. There's there's some question on ability here still that some pharmacies and some pharmacies will need to solve, but ready and willing to provide services and to be paid for some services right there does again need to be some workflow operations that needs to get figured out. And then health plans, they're ready and willing to.

00:27:56:22 - 00:28:21:22
Speaker 3
Hey, pharmacist and pharmacist for providing services. There is that big question as you as you said it, just because they can do the services one, are they able to document in a way that is valid for the health plan to get credit for it in these different systems that exist? And the other part of it is just because pharmacies can do some of these services are in there as they work with these patients, do they actually improve the results?

00:28:22:07 - 00:28:49:23
Speaker 3
That's the other big question that comes to it. I'll I'll add this little editorial before we we close or I'll let you add more information, Andy,  Health plans. Right. They're working with different health care providers that can provide these services, get credit for these services. So, yes, well, pharmacist can do these services. Pharmacists are going to be evaluated in terms of how many services they can can complete and what's the cost versus what's the outcomes.

00:28:50:06 - 00:29:08:03
Speaker 3
So to put it kind of plainly, if we don't execute and actually help to show that there's an improvement in these quality measures when engaging with the patients, these opportunities can just as quickly be taken away. So opportunity is good, but we have to make the most of it as a pharmacy profession. Any final comments there, Andy?

00:29:08:22 - 00:29:33:05
Speaker 1
I think you've done a great job of summarizing a 46 page report. Well done. Those are the highlights. There's more detail within the report, and I think that it ended up being a very beautiful report, have a lot of feelings about these reports. This is like the project that is end all year round for me, whether we're planning the next report or we've finished the one and we're promoting it as we are now.

00:29:33:05 - 00:29:47:03
Speaker 1
So we're already planning and starting some of the work into the 2023 report, which we plan to to release at the end of the summer. Roughly. This is this is a and a labor of love for us at peak and we hope that it provides a lot of value, a.

00:29:47:23 - 00:30:15:06
Speaker 3
Labor of love for us, but hopefully an opportunity that creates new labor in the term in the form of services that pharmacists can provide when going through all this information. And we appreciate that and appreciate the conversation today. Again, check out the trend report on the US website. We're moving now to our closing section of the show. And Andy, these are our Rapidfire questions to get to know you a little bit more as a person.

00:30:15:06 - 00:30:33:06
Speaker 3
They also have changed since you were last on the show. So something different, you're not going to have to repeat yourself here on these items, but I'm going to run us through the questions, give you a chance to respond, and then we'll well, we'll wrap this one up. So question number one, are you a morning person or a night owl?

00:30:33:24 - 00:30:39:21
Speaker 1
I lean morning person, so I can't say I'm great at either.

00:30:39:21 - 00:30:50:01
Speaker 3
Excellent question. Two Do you prefer to read the book or watch the movie? And if you can give any particular examples, that's welcome.

00:30:50:01 - 00:31:09:15
Speaker 1
I want to say that I prefer to read the book, but in polling there's a concept of revealed preferences. My revealed preference would be that I prefer to watch the movie because I watch more movies than I read books. I will say as an example that I point to as the read the book more than watch the movie.

00:31:09:24 - 00:31:20:05
Speaker 1
I have read the J.R.R. Tolkien trilogy three times, I think, but I absolutely still love the movies. But books are better.

00:31:20:22 - 00:31:40:21
Speaker 3
I have to 100% agree with that. The movies are absolute classics. I love them dearly. I rewatched them at least annually, which is much greater in number than the books. But I do think the books are better. But a three hour movie for each versus the reading part, which does take a lot longer. Sometimes it's just easier to watch the movie.

00:31:41:16 - 00:31:46:14
Speaker 3
Next question for you, Andy. What is your recommendation for living a healthy life.

00:31:47:11 - 00:32:09:09
Speaker 1
To get away from tropes? I think being intentional about the things that you do and giving yourself some slack when you don't do all the things that you need to do or that you should do, I think is is pretty good advice. What's working for me? And should I lose £5? Probably. Am I going to maybe. But I'm not going to give myself a hard time about it.

00:32:10:14 - 00:32:28:20
Speaker 3
You know, I like that answer that I think has a lot to do with the mental fortitude. Right? And you want to be a little strict on yourself to achieve these sort of things. You need to have some guidelines. But if you're beating yourself up mentally, psychologically, all the time, that's then that's how everyone else is going to seem to you.

00:32:28:20 - 00:32:47:07
Speaker 3
Right. So it has to start internally, I think. Is that the key consideration? Right. All right, Andy, final question from this section and this one may actually be a little bit of a repeat from when you were on the show before, but it's an important one. Perhaps the most important question that we're asking, what is one goal that you are currently working towards?

00:32:48:24 - 00:33:16:04
Speaker 1
I may end up repeating myself, but it's something that I've been working on for a bit. I'm a music is my hobby, Music is my love for the viewers at home who can't actually see us. You're just listening to us. I'm pointing at a couple of guitars that are in my background. I am working towards, if not writing an original song and recording it this year, then then doing some kind of cover or rearrangement of something existing just to to keep scratching that itch.

00:33:16:18 - 00:33:32:00
Speaker 3
I will note for our listeners because again, we are recording a video. I can see Andy and working with him on a regular basis that he does have additional guitars that have at least appeared in the background of his video and talking with him. There's been additions there. Andy I'm going to kind of mesh together two of the answers.

00:33:32:00 - 00:33:52:14
Speaker 3
Going to give you something to think about. I mentioned a Love Lord of the Rings mentioned that you're working on music, writing songs about Lord of the Rings worked very well for this little known band called Led Zeppelin. So, you know, maybe there's an opportunity there for you to become that and and. RUSH Yes, absolutely. So maybe that's the way forward.

00:33:52:22 - 00:33:54:12
Speaker 3
Just just my $0.02 as it goes.

00:33:54:12 - 00:33:55:06
Speaker 1
To my muse.

00:33:56:20 - 00:34:17:17
Speaker 3
All right. Well, Andy, appreciate it. We're going to actually wrap up this episode now. And the real final question for you. If folks want to get a hold of you, learn more about what you're doing with data science here at us, because that is that is very interesting. Beyond just the trend reports or if they have questions, follow up for you about the trend report, what is the best way for them to contact you?

00:34:18:08 - 00:34:32:08
Speaker 1
Best way is by email and it's a thorn at pharmacy quality dot com that's at or any pharmacy quality dot com and that email is listed in the trend report itself. So if you go to the PQS website and down the trend report it's there.

00:34:33:05 - 00:34:47:09
Speaker 3
Thanks Andy and listeners with that we have now wrapped up this episode we thank you for joining us today and we hope you listen to our next episode of the Quality Corner Show. Before we go, we have one final message from the 16.

00:34:48:03 - 00:35:08:24
Speaker 2
The Pharmacy Quality Solutions Quality Corner show has a request for you. Our goal is to spread the word about how quality measurement can help improve health outcomes. And we need your help in sharing this podcast to friends and colleagues in the health care industry. We also want you to provide feedback, ask those questions and suggest health topics you'd like to see covered.

00:35:09:17 - 00:35:31:23
Speaker 2
If you are a health expert and, you want to contribute to the show or even talk on the show, please contact us. You can email info at pharmacy quality dot com. Let us know what is on your mind, what we can address so that you are fully informed. We want you to be able to provide the best care for your patients and members, and we wish all of you listeners out well.