Every eight weeks, pharmacists from rural practice settings across Minnesota gather to tackle barriers to integrating pharmacists and medication therapy management services into rural health systems. The workgroup, called the Rural Rx Alliance, offers a virtual space for practitioners to find resources, give each other guidance, and bring forward questions.
Dr. Alison Knutson, organizer of the workgroup and a consultant for the University of Minnesota’s College of Pharmacy in the Center for Leading Healthcare Change, has recruited about a dozen pharmacists from ten different practices so far. Typically, participants are from health organizations with only a single clinic or hospital.
“There was just a need for a different type of support for rural practice,” Knutson says. “I did a quick survey of the participants and universally they said the focus on rural practice and having a community of pharmacists who are in similar situations has been very valuable. … This has met a need … which has been really exciting to hear.”
Workgroup meetings mostly consist of collaborative group sessions, but the Rural Rx Alliance also offers one-on-one coaching to meet participants where they’re at in the process of integrating medication therapy management and pharmacy services into their health system’s primary care team. Some rural health systems don’t currently have access to pharmacy support, Knutson says, so the team is also working to identify other access points to utilize pharmacy resources already available in the community.
Making a difference in Minnesota communities
Dr. DeeAnna Hanson, a pharmacist at Lake Region Healthcare in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, says Knutson and Rural Rx Alliance have helped her to grow her clinical practice. They’ve helped Hanson answer questions about efficacy, marketing her services on a larger scale, enticing providers to participate, tracking metrics and patient numbers, electronic health record technology tips and tricks, and more. Joining a group like Rural Rx Alliance can help rural pharmacists become more innovative, better reach patients, and establish more ambulatory roles in their clinics, which she says is a “big undertaking.”
Particularly for rural sites, Hanson believes that one of the most significant challenges within the pharmacy profession is making a pharmacist’s capabilities known to the public, which is why a workgroup can be an instrumental resource.
“Traditionally, a lot of people see a pharmacist as just a white coat standing behind a counter counting pills, but there's been so much advancement in the past 10-20 years,” Hanson says. “Pharmacists are doing so much more and really becoming a part of a health care team for a patient. Being rural… we don't have the support, the backing, or even the staff sizes to pursue some of these non-traditional roles of a pharmacist, so having a network outside of our facility to help brainstorm ideas and bounce suggestions off of has been super beneficial.”
Though the group is currently composed of only pharmacists, Knutson considers Rural Rx Alliance to be interdisciplinary in nature and open to physicians, for example. Nearly all family medicine residencies within Minnesota now have a pharmacist role in the clinic setting, she said, which often leaves new medical graduates who migrate to rural settings missing the support of an interprofessional team.
The alliance was intended for Minnesota pharmacists, since each state has specificities when it comes to practice models, but Knutson said she would love to see other states recreate the model of Rural Rx Alliance to suit their own state-specific practice challenges and opportunities.
“I am unaware of other states having collaboratives similar [to Rural Rx Alliance] and we are looking forward to watching this group grow in order to meet the unique needs of pharmacists in rural Minnesota,” Knutson says.
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