Pharmacy Week, celebrated the third full week in October, acknowledges the invaluable contributions of pharmacists and technicians. Doctors and nurses get lots of well-deserved attention, but pharmacists are a crucial part of a patient’s care team. That’s especially true for patients with complex needs, which is always the case in hospice.
This week, we celebrate the hundreds of pharmacists, technicians and support staff who help Enclara Pharmacia care for nearly 100,000 hospice patients each day. They take on many roles across the organization, including optimizing each patient’s pharmacological care, ensuring patient safety and providing strategic clinical consultation for the larger hospice organization.
Optimizing Pharmacological Care
End-of-life care can be complicated. Changes in patients’ ability to take or metabolize certain drugs require individual solutions. Patients may also have different care goals throughout hospice enrollment. Pharmacists help honor their wishes.
Every day, Enclara pharmacists in our call center answer questions from clinicians about what drugs and formulations might best treat a patient symptom. Enclara pharmacists also conduct biweekly drug utilization reviews to ensure how to optimize patients’ pharmacological therapy for the best possible quality of life.
Ensuring Patient Safety
Patient safety is the #1 concern for any pharmacist. That means reviewing every new medication for dosing, allergies, interactions and other safety concerns. Attention to detail is essential. Very different drugs may have similar names. The abbreviation for milligram (MG) is just one letter removed from microgram (MCG), but 1,000 times more.
Enclara pharmacists and technicians make sure medications are profiled correctly, with appropriate dosing and instructions. In our national fulfillment centers, they check every medication that goes out the door.
Strategic Clinical Consultation
Most pharmacists are responsible for the care of individual patients. At Enclara, some are also engaged with hospice leadership to help each client provide the highest quality care possible while also controlling costs.
Each hospice gets its own clinical manager to help track and manage overall utilization, address educational needs for hospice staff, and develop recommendations that are clinically backed, aligned with the hospice’s own priorities and based on positive experiences of other hospice partners. This special partnership helps Enclara clients achieve their long-term goals.
Celebrating Our Team This October — and All Year Long
Enclara is honored to showcase our team of pharmacy professionals and their commitment to providing an unmatched level of customer service, unprecedented responsiveness and proactive approach to helping clients optimize excellent patient care. During this year’s Pharmacy Week, make sure you are following us on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook as we highlight and celebrate the many achievements of our pharmacists and pharmacy technicians.
