How Rite Aid Rallies Their Pharmacy Teams to Improve Patient Care

Emilee Kennelly, Manager of Adherence Improvement and Clinical Services at Rite Aid chats with the PQS by Innovaccer Quality Corner Show about empowering their pharmacy teams to improve patient care services and help patients manage their medications.

Quality Corner Host Nick Dorich, PharmD, and Emilee Kennelly talk about how to improve medication adherence for patients and provide enhanced services at a community level. Kennelly shares how using technology services to free up time for pharmacists to provide more clinical care services. She also talks about how EQUIPP helps Rite Aid pharmacists manage their customers' medication adherence.

More about Rite Aid

Chapters

• 1:06 Introduction
• 4:52 Empowering Pharmacy Team Members
• 8:39 EQUIPP Enhanced Services
• 13:08 The Future of Community Pharmacy Practice
• 17:43 Closing

Transcript

00:00:00:18 - 00:00:22:21

Emilee Kennelly

As we as pharmacists are aware, health care providers, medication adherence is so important in helping our customers to achieve the full benefit of a medication regimen to really help manage that disease state and improve their overall health. We love that the programs such as this one allow us to kind of be nimble and intervene before these health problems actually prevent these adherence monitoring programs such as the LAMP

00:00:22:23 - 00:00:44:14

Emilee Kennelly

Program to help us intervene with customers before they miss doses of their medication. And traditionally, in the adherence space, we've had to rely on the PDC scoring or proportion of days covered calculation, which makes it hard to have an impactful difference in terms of adherence. This measure, this PDC measure is delayed so it looks backwards to calculate adherence.

00:00:44:16 - 00:00:56:20

Emilee Kennelly

So having that partnership with EQUIPP and using their service programs has been so instrumental in our journey of being one of the most improved pharmacy chains in terms of PDC scoring.

00:00:56:22 - 00:01:06:24

Voiceover

Welcome to the Pharmacy Quality Solutions Quality Corner Show. Buckle up and put your thinking cap on. The Quality Corner Show starts now.

00:01:07:01 - 00:01:32:07

Nick Dorich

Hello Quality Corner Show listeners, welcome to the PQS 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 Dorich. Our guest today is Emilee Kennelly from Rite Aid. At Rite Aid, Emilee is the manager adherence improvement and clinical initiatives. She's here to talk to us today a little bit about how they are improving adherence and clinical solutions for the patients and their community.

00:01:32:09 - 00:01:37:16

Nick Dorich

Emilee, before we jump into that, how are you doing today? How are you feeling as you're on the Quality Corner Show?

00:01:37:18 - 00:01:42:10

Emilee Kennelly

Doing great. I'm so excited to be here. Thank you so much for the chance to to talk to everybody today.

00:01:42:12 - 00:01:56:11

Nick Dorich

Fantastic. Well, before we jump into the show, let's get a little bit about you and your background, in pharmacy. So, you know, where did you go to pharmacy school? Where did you graduate from? And then how did you go from that role to where you are now today?

00:01:56:13 - 00:02:27:17

Emilee Kennelly

So I have been working in the pharmacy world for nearly 20 years now, and all of that time has been spent at Rite Aid. I started out as a pharmacy cashier in high school when I was 18, and I also worked for Rite Aid as an intern. Once I got into pharmacy school, I attended Duquesne University here in beautiful Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and I gained some experience, within my education there at our wellness center, which was focused mainly on providing ambulatory care services and medication management to underserved populations in the Pittsburgh area.

00:02:27:19 - 00:02:47:20

Emilee Kennelly

That really helped to ignite my passion for these services and also finding ways to work those services within the retail pharmacy space. Once I graduated, I spent seven years just working in our stores, really focusing in on finding what else motivated me and what I wanted my next steps to be. I was always looking for opportunities to get more involved in clinical services.

00:02:47:22 - 00:03:14:11

Emilee Kennelly

I was able to serve as an internal CPR instructor for our teams. I helped lead other stores within our districts to drive for MTM results, and I also got to work part time in our drug information center. Once I kind of finished up with that, I moved into the Drug Information Center full time, where I spent six years working on that team, dealing drug information requests, and then also having to move that department into the MTM and adherence space, as we kind of found our team had the bandwidth to do so.

00:03:14:13 - 00:03:31:02

Emilee Kennelly

And then about six months ago, I moved into our clinical services department as the manager of adherence improvement, like you had said, and clinical initiatives. And in this role, I've just been really working to drive our adherence initiatives forward and our MTM completion forward as well.

00:03:31:04 - 00:03:48:15

Nick Dorich

Thanks, Emilee, for that background. And I've noted this on, many episodes when we've talked or spoken with other pharmacists. The background in pharmacy, your career in education and training, allows you to do so many different and unique things and kind of like yourself. I think most pharmacists have had their hands or have had their feet in many different buckets.

00:03:48:15 - 00:04:04:03

Nick Dorich

And in the role you're in now, it's really letting you use that expertise and also your experience from, you know, working on the bench as a front line pharmacist as well. As you mentioned, you're about six months into your role, and we've recently had a chance to connect, about what you were doing as part of the Rite Aid team.

00:04:04:07 - 00:04:23:06

Nick Dorich

And as we were having a conversation, it was a, hey, this is a great chat. Maybe we should share this with a broader audience. And this is how we were able to connect. So, Emilee, without further ado, I'll stop kind of teasing our audience. For today's episode, we are talking about how pharmacies utilize data to empower their pharmacy staff and their patients to improve health outcomes.

00:04:23:06 - 00:04:27:15

Nick Dorich

So with that, Emilee, are you ready to begin today's conversation and jump into our questions?

00:04:27:17 - 00:04:29:03

Emilee Kennelly

Yes, absolutely.

00:04:29:05 - 00:04:50:24

Nick Dorich

Fantastic. All right. So we're going to start off here Emilee. Patient care. Right. We all know about patient care. It's why we went to pharmacy school. It's why we wanted to be a pharmacist. But patient care, it's not always straightforward. It really does blend together, both a personal approach with being that community facing healthcare provider, but also utilizing some efficiencies with technology and data.

00:04:51:05 - 00:05:00:07

Nick Dorich

So how do you how does the team at Rite Aid, how do you empower your pharmacy team members to provide patient care services and help patients manage their medications?

00:05:00:09 - 00:05:18:23

Emilee Kennelly

So I have been so proud to work for a company like Rite Aid that has always prioritized the well-being of our customers to help them achieve what we like to call full health for life. We've been really working diligently over the last few years to really optimize our technology offerings for our teams and our customers, to make their health care much easier to navigate.

00:05:19:00 - 00:05:47:02

Emilee Kennelly

Health care. As we all know, health care can be challenging enough to work through for our customers. So we've really leaned into our, technology offerings to simplify what we can. These efficiencies also come with the added benefit of freeing up our pharmacists to provide more direct patient care. Through these technology enhancements, we're really aiming to make it easier to identify customers who might need our adherence support to enjoy the full benefit of medications and their disease state management.

00:05:47:04 - 00:06:22:01

Emilee Kennelly

We're really excited. We have a really great patented clinical opportunity identification tool within our dispensing system that identifies customers that have individualized clinical opportunities during workflow. A really great example of how we use this technology with our customers, is we kind of use this, in conjunction with our customers that schedule a vaccine appointment. So by using this clinical opportunity system, our pharmacists can very easily see what other clinical opportunities in the form of either MTM, or adherence opportunities that are available to the customer that they're about to immunize.

00:06:22:03 - 00:06:55:06

Emilee Kennelly

Instead of having to look through multiple systems to find each opportunity within a minute, they can find those opportunities and plan to talk to the customer about those. And, as we know, we're in respiratory season, flu season, we're really excited about the possibility of our customers being able to use these technologies to kind of make the most of their time with our customers. Having that face time with the customer as you give them immunization is absolutely invaluable, and we want to be able to capitalize on that time to improve their health by making it as easy as possible to understand what the customer's needs are.

00:06:55:08 - 00:07:05:12

Emilee Kennelly

It's really important to us as a company for our customers to know that we are absolutely invested in their health, and that we're doing all that we can to ensure the best possible care for our customers.

00:07:05:14 - 00:07:39:07

Nick Dorich

That's fantastic. And Emilee, before we continue on it, I, as I understand it right, this is something where it very much is a conversation between the patient, our customer and the pharmacy team, right where the patients are, our customers, they are coming to you, whether it's to schedule a service like immunizations or test and treat or other services that are becoming more commonplace depending upon your state and what is allowed by law, of course, I'm sure that is different, obviously for Rite Aid across many different states, but you can have, the patient can be prompt in that or sometimes it's as the pharmacy team member, depending on what the service is, it could be the pharmacist,

00:07:39:07 - 00:07:47:14

Nick Dorich

it could be the pharmacy technician. So am I hearing you right that it is somewhat of a hey, we're all in this together directing towards the patient but also patient to the care team.

00:07:47:16 - 00:07:54:24

Emilee Kennelly

Yes, absolutely. We want to make it as easy as possible to have those conversations and make them aware that those conversation opportunities are available.

00:07:55:01 - 00:08:17:03

Nick Dorich

Yeah, that's great because a lot of times I think we've all seen this, whether it's a health care service or just any other service that you may be getting in your life, where you may go for a certain service or a product. And hey, did you know we offer X or Y or Z? You may not say yes to it that first time around, but then once you've already heard it, that next time you come back, you may be more willing or you may give yourself the additional time to utilize that service.

00:08:17:03 - 00:08:36:19

Nick Dorich

So fantastic approach. And as you said, I think this really goes to help free up the time for the pharmacy staff because it goes to scheduling these parts of it. When you've got more of a schedule that allows you to best utilize your time. So you're being, you're best utilizing time behind the bench at the pharmacy, but also being most engaged with the customers and the patients when they are there.

00:08:36:21 - 00:08:52:19

Nick Dorich

All right. Well, I'm going to go to our next question here. And this is part of the conversation that we've had already or previously prior to this, this discussion over the podcast. But one of the things that we've been talking about with your team at Rite Aid is the EQUIPP and the enhanced service programs, you know, with EQUIPP.

00:08:52:21 - 00:09:12:02

Nick Dorich

And this has actually been an area where it's been a great success for us because, you know, these EQUIPP Enhanced Service programs, they are synergize with your internal adherence or clinical service programs. So can you talk about how that goes to help inform the decision making and empowering the patients, the consumers, to improve their health?

00:09:12:04 - 00:09:39:02

Emilee Kennelly

Yeah, absolutely. So the adherence and site offerings that EQUIPP has offered us have really helped us to hone our focus and over the last few months, to help identify those customers who need a little more assistance, with their adherence and then also managing their medications, as you, you know, probably where we found a lot of success, Rite Aid being involved in the longitudinal adherence monitoring program or LAMP to monitor medication adherence for certain customers identified by their insurance plan.

00:09:39:04 - 00:10:04:02

Emilee Kennelly

This Lamp program identifies customers that are in danger of becoming non adherent. And this partnership and program have been so valuable for us in driving our adherence conversations with these identified customers. As we as pharmacists are aware, health care providers medication adherence is so important in helping our customers to achieve the full benefit of a medication regimen to really help manage that disease state and improve their overall health.

00:10:04:04 - 00:10:29:21

Emilee Kennelly

We love that the programs such as this one allow us to kind of be nimble and intervene before these health problems actually present. These adherence monitoring programs such as the LAMP programs, help us to intervene with customers before they miss doses of their medication. And traditionally in the adherence space, we've had to rely on the PDC scoring or proportion of days covered calculation, which makes it hard to have an impactful difference in terms of adherence.

00:10:29:23 - 00:10:51:01

Emilee Kennelly

This measure, this PDC measure is delayed so it looks backwards to calculate adherence. So having that partnership with EQUIPP and using their service programs has been so instrumental in our journey of being one of the most improved pharmacy chains in terms of PDC scoring. As we know you know, there's always still gaps in patient care, such as a customer not filling their medication.

00:10:51:03 - 00:11:15:18

Emilee Kennelly

Like a new prescription and trying to impact adherence before it has a negative impact on the patient's health and wellness has been far superior, than aiming adherence interventions at patients based on PDC scores and looking backwards at that. By the time we get to look at a PDC score and find that someone is non adherent, it's usually too late to act to get them back up to that industry standard 80% that we like to see.

00:11:15:20 - 00:11:32:11

Emilee Kennelly

So it's really important for us to help our customers whenever, wherever they are on their health care journey. So we truly appreciate having a partnership with EQUIPP, and with you guys to help identify those customers in danger of falling into non adherence and those health complications that we really want to avoid.

00:11:32:13 - 00:12:04:10

Nick Dorich

And this is one of my favorite conversations. Emilee you did a great job explaining it. And you are right as it goes to the PDC scores where they are they're looking back in time. Right. And it's just like many things in life, once you see a problem, you've likely missed the opportunity to fix it or it's going to take more time to get back to normal, where your team and where the group has been very successful has been integrating some of that data and utilizing the enhanced service programs to outreach and to connect with these patients when they maybe they're not yet negatively impacting, maybe they're not yet non adherent, but you're able to connect

00:12:04:10 - 00:12:22:14

Nick Dorich

with these patients when you see a performance score that is declining. Or you may see and identify patients that are new to your pharmacy. But there is some performance data here. So you can get a better understanding of what is your medication experience. Right. They may be looking at and they may have attribution for a measure like statin adherence.

00:12:22:14 - 00:12:41:21

Nick Dorich

But if you're just filling that stat in for the first time, well, your team wants to dig deeper into that information and understand what is what is that consideration, what are the patients, what are their primary considerations and really understanding? Why are you taking this medication? Why what are the goals that you want to achieve? And how can our solutions at Rite Aid help you achieve those?

00:12:41:21 - 00:13:04:04

Nick Dorich

Which I think is really a great story, to be able to share both with your team internally as the pharmacist, but also with the health plans and of course, with the patients, the consumers that you're serving in your community. So fantastic stuff there. I love this approach here. Because again, it is blending that that data, that technology approach, along with maintaining the personal relationships that community pharmacists are known for.

00:13:04:06 - 00:13:24:23

Nick Dorich

Yeah. All right. So, Emilee, we'll go to our last question for, for today's, for today's discussion, and this part here, we've talked a little bit about the past and a little bit about the present. I want to think about the future. So what changes excite you for the future of community pharmacy practice? And, you know, what does this mean for for Rite Aid?

00:13:24:23 - 00:13:31:21

Nick Dorich

What are you kind of thinking about? And what do value based, contracts, value based opportunities mean for your team as you move forward?

00:13:31:23 - 00:13:54:03

Emilee Kennelly

So I think at this point, community pharmacy is really at a crossroads right now. If we, you know, we've emerged from the pandemic that really magnified some of the issues that our community pharmacists are facing. You know, we see pockets of understaffing, coupled with increased demand for, you know, the immunization services, MTM services, point of care, otherwise known, as you know, we call those value based services.

00:13:54:05 - 00:14:13:24

Emilee Kennelly

I would love to see and even help drive excitement in the community pharmacy through an increase in these services offered at a community pharmacy, expanding into point of care testing, you know, hormonal contraceptive prescribing in certain states, and our MTM offerings at Rite Aid is really indicative of where I'd like to see our profession move forward towards.

00:14:14:01 - 00:14:31:23

Emilee Kennelly

I think that embracing that value based contracting can really drive excitement in our pharmacies. And then you going back to that idea that our community pharmacy practice is at a crossroads. I'm really thankful to work for a company that prioritizes allowing pharmacists to practice, you know, at the top of their license and use those skills that they've learned.

00:14:32:04 - 00:14:53:08

Emilee Kennelly

We've had a lot of great results out of the gate with our clinical pharmacist model of pharmacy staffing, where we actually place a full time pharmacist in select stores dedicated solely to driving, value based clinical services. This model of staffing is really generating some excitement for our teams because of the ultimate potential to drive those results for customer care.

00:14:53:10 - 00:15:21:08

Emilee Kennelly

Value based care and its success are really based on patient outcomes, but we can't impact patient care and drive successful results, if we are spread too thin. There's truly an endless number of value based services, you know, such as A1c screenings, blood pressure screenings, point of care testing. You know, that they can be offered at this point. We've been working to stay strategic in those offerings just by focusing in on the value based services that we know that we can provide at a high level.

00:15:21:10 - 00:15:42:00

Emilee Kennelly

And then going back to that idea of using technology to drive patient care, we made it easy for our customers to schedule these services to fit it in, you know, with their busy schedules. As we all know, retail pharmacists are truly one of the most accessible health care providers, and we've been working really hard to offer our services to the community through these value based offerings.

00:15:42:02 - 00:16:19:13

Emilee Kennelly

I am just so passionate about bringing clinical practice into retail pharmacy. I think that leaning into the clinical space and value based offerings can really help to draw that net new talent into the retail space, instead of just having everyone assume that being a clinical pharmacist is only possible in a hospital setting. Rite Aid really does continue to unlock the true value of our pharmacists, and we're finding this to be so true as we move forward towards those value based services to help our customers, again, achieve what we love to call that whole health for life, both for their medication adherence as well as just their entire well-being through a well-managed disease state.

00:16:19:15 - 00:16:37:01

Nick Dorich

Yeah. Emilee, I think you mentioned your own passion for it, and that certainly comes true in our conversation today. And I'll know, you know, whether it's you or what you've described here for the right team in it and, and its approach. Much of this is still a work in progress. Everything like like many things in life, it is a work in progress.

00:16:37:01 - 00:16:59:22

Nick Dorich

You're building out new systems, offering new services, which depending upon the state where the pharmacy is, there may be different allowances that are there. But the Rite Aid team has really embraced these changes. And our and notably in a market in an industry where pharmacy has had struggles in recent years, again, coming out of the pandemic and how the stress has related to that, the Rite Aid team has not been complacent.

00:16:59:22 - 00:17:22:16

Nick Dorich

The Rite Aid team has been stretching and growing out to new ways to provide patient care services and change the expectation for the patients, the consumers that are coming into your pharmacy, but also changing the expectations for your internal team members and what they can do to provide patient care services, which is fantastic. So, Emilee, before we do wrap up for today, I'll give you kind of an opportunity.

00:17:22:20 - 00:17:42:05

Nick Dorich

You mentioned that here at the time of, of this recording, and it's probably being recorded a couple weeks before the episode actually goes out live. But even still, during that time, we are in the midst of cough and cold, you know, flu season or at least starting it and certainly doing the immunizations. I'm actually getting my my flu and Covid boosters, this week actually, myself.

00:17:42:06 - 00:18:08:03

Nick Dorich

But, you know, this is certainly a time where it is busy, perhaps busier than any other time. Other time of the year for the pharmacy and for your community pharmacy team members, also the patients coming into the pharmacy. So before we wrap up here, would you have any, you know, kind of recommendations or perhaps inspirational words or shout outs, you know, to your team members, to your Rite Aid pharmacy team members, but also to, to any and all other, you know, pharmacists and pharmacy staff that are on the front lines that may be listening to this episode.

00:18:08:05 - 00:18:33:06

Emilee Kennelly

We are just we're so grateful for all that you guys do to provide, you know, this care for our customer base, whether it be through immunizations, these adherence consultations. You know, as we know, immunizations are a great way to help prevent disease, to help prevent the spread of that flu that we're seeing. You know, we're just so grateful that our pharmacists are putting themselves out there on the front line, helping our customers every day, which is what, you know, we couldn't ask for anything more.

00:18:33:06 - 00:18:42:13

Emilee Kennelly

So we're just we're so thankful and every day, every script that gets filled, every immunization that gets filled, we thank you for all of your hard work.

00:18:42:15 - 00:19:02:00

Nick Dorich

Excellent, fantastic. And then, Emilee, one final question before we wrap up, before we go today, folks here may be inspired or they may be interested in learning more about what you and Rite Aid are doing. There may be health plans who are hearing about, your comments there on how you're changing your adherence program and how your, one at one of the best improvers for it here, all these different things.

00:19:02:03 - 00:19:09:21

Nick Dorich

So is there a way that folks can reach out to you? Is there an email or can they find you on LinkedIn? What's the way, the best way to get in touch in case folks have any questions?

00:19:10:02 - 00:19:21:19

Emilee Kennelly

Absolutely. I am on LinkedIn. And then also if anybody wants to contact me with any questions, like Nick said, feel free to just send an email. We'll keep it easy. It's press@riteaid.com and I'll be in touch.

00:19:21:21 - 00:19:39:21

Nick Dorich

There we go. Easy enough. Well, Emilee, we really appreciate you coming and sharing the story of how, you know, the Rite Aid team has been embracing these patient care service opportunities, is blending the technology with the care of the local community members, and really taking a step forward into these value based arrangements. So it's all really exciting stuff.

00:19:39:21 - 00:20:01:16

Nick Dorich

And, you know, as mentioned, when we had this conversation between our two teams, it was a hey, this is a rah rah, let's go pharmacy. We're going to make some changes here and really change the perspective on what is the community pharmacy practice. So, you know, on behalf of me and behalf of the team here at PQS I thank and applaud you and the Rite Aid team for really taking the bull by the horns and moving forward on the, on this work.

00:20:01:20 - 00:20:19:07

Nick Dorich

And we look forward to your great success as you finish out 2024 and then as we move ahead into 2025. So thank you for that. Hats off to you. But for our listeners and for our audience that has wrapped up this episode of the Quality Corner Show. So we hope you enjoyed it and we hope you listen to our next episode.

00:20:19:09 - 00:20:23:22

Nick Dorich

But before we go, we have one final message from the PQS team.

00:20:23:24 - 00:20:45:13

Voiceover

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00:20:45:15 - 00:21:05:04

Voiceover

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00:21:05:06 - 00:21:07:18

Voiceover

And we wish all of you listeners out there well.