Leading Organizations Pledge Action to Support HRSA's Patient Safety
and Pharmacy Collaborative
The energy was palpable at the first Leadership Coordinating Council meeting of HRSA’s Patient Safety and Clinical Pharmacy Services Collaborative as one by one, attendees made commitments to support the work of the new national initiative.
The inaugural meeting took place Feb. 15 at the headquarters of the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists in Bethesda, Md. The meeting generated interest and enthusiasm among the 60 participants, who represent 40 leading safety-net and pharmacy organizations and several federal partners. HRSA’s Center for Quality and Office of Pharmacy Affairs co-sponsored the event.
The meeting was designed to encourage key organizations to join with HRSA to advance the collaborative’s three objectives:
- improve patient safety;
- increase high-quality, cost-effective pharmacy services; and
- improve health outcomes.
The response was impressive: by meeting’s end, more than 26 organizations had made solid commitments to help accomplish these goals.
“We created the Patient Safety and Clinical Pharmacy Services Collaborative to help ensure that patient care delivered by safety-net organizations becomes the safest and best in the nation,” said HRSA Administrator Elizabeth Duke. “Having this leadership team on board, with the experience and knowledge they bring, is essential to our success.”
Commitments ranged from publicizing the collaborative in newsletters and publications to providing financial support. For example:
- Anne Burns of the American Pharmacists Association pledged to create awareness of the collaborative among pharmacists through communications and education;
- Henri Manasse of the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, the meeting’s host, offered to provide authoritative, noncommercial drug information to patients and providers;
- Chris Hatwig of Apexus/340B Program suggested financial support, such as assisting with expenses for 340B entities to attend collaborative meetings;
- Lawrence Bachorik of the Food and Drug Administration offered to convene an expert panel to ensure that the collaborative has the latest drug safety information;
- Diane Cousins and Colleen Brennan of U.S. Pharmacopeia will ask collaborative members to participate on and present to the advisory panel on health literacy and prescription medication vial labels. USP will also share current data on medication errors.
- And C. Edwin Webb of the American College of Clinical Pharmacy offered to link federally qualified health centers with ACCP members to explore working together.
HRSA’s Denise Geolot and Jimmy Mitchell applauded the enthusiastic response from participants.
“We are very pleased with the outstanding commitments we’ve received from our partners,” said Geolot, director of the Center for Quality. “This vote of confidence will lay a strong foundation as we move forward to improve patient safety, clinical pharmacy services and health outcomes.”
Mitchell, director of the Office of Pharmacy Affairs, is glad to have clinical pharmacy services recognized as a vital part of patient safety. “The collaborative will help increase awareness of the benefits of these services and promote the role of the pharmacist as an integral part of an inter-disciplinary professional healthcare team.”
Staffers in the two offices are currently working to identify best practices and high performers in patient safety and clinical pharmacy services among HRSA’s grantees and their partners. The collaborative hopes to improve health outcomes across the country by broadly sharing that information with health care organizations and providers.
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Printer-friendly March 2008 Inside HRSA (4MB) Acrobat/PDF
