Chapter Application Solutions

CHAPTER 1

1. For questions related to patient care services, such as medication administration, you should reach out to the Patient Care Manager or Patient Care Team. The Patient Care Manager’s role includes managing patient care services for a geographic area and this would include being familiar will patient care protocols. The Patient Care Team is another option since these members of the team provide patient care services. Since medication administration services are offered by the organizations and are legal in the state, a member of the Patient Care Team should be familiar with the medication administration service, including the protocol. Another option would be to ask the Regional Pharmacy Manager. The Regional Pharmacy Manager manages the business components of the pharmacy and should be familiar with patient care services that are offered at this location. Finally, you could ask the Director of Pharmacy Operations; however unless you have an established relationship with the Director you would want to contact the Director of Pharmacy Operations as a last resort.

2. Examples of currently offered operational services: prescription filling, medication evaluation, patient safety, prescription delivery, inventory management, personnel management. Examples of currently offered patient care services: Routine and travel immunizations, disease state management, medication therapy management, medication administration, and pharmacist prescribing services.

3. Examples of Community-based Pharmacist Practitioner services: execute the JCPP—Pharmacists’ Patient Care Process, conduct medication reconciliation during the prescription filling process, evaluate the appropriateness of medications during the prescription filling process, resolve therapy issues (e.g., drug-drug, drug-disease, drug-allergy interactions) through the Drug Utilization Review (DUR) process, identify, and recommend patient care services (e.g., immunizations, MTM services, disease state management services), recommend over-the-counter (OTC), herbal, and natural products, triage and answer patient disease state and medication related questions, refer patients to other healthcare providers (e.g., Emergency Department, Primary Care Provider, Dentist), prescribe medications, collaborate with other healthcare providers to optimize therapies and offer patient care services within the community at health fairs, and so on.

4. Since constructing a drive through window is not an option, an alternative would be to offer medication delivery services. This option is not cost prohibitive since it does not require construction. However, you will need dedicated space to prepare shipping packages, ultimately optimizing patient safety. The pharmacy will need a dedicated location to prepare and ship prescription orders, which may include both prescription and OTC products.

5. In addition to cost, the pharmacy should ensure that they have adequate space to house the automated system. Automated machines can take up a considerable amount of space within the pharmacy.

CHAPTER 2

1. The scenario at the beginning of the chapter presents two options which are best described as “entrepreneurship” and “intrapreneurship.” Both deal with the concept of “extracting value”—which essentially means finding new ways to provide services or products which customers want to purchase. However, intrapreneurship takes entrepreneurial skills and applies them within an existing organization. It has less inherent risk than entrepreneurship—as almost all ...