Table of Contents
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The Pharmacy HIT Collaborative today released its revised strategic plan: The Roadmap for Pharmacy Information Technology Integration in U.S. Health Care: 2018 to 2021 Update.
“This third roadmap is an important achievement,” said Kurt Proctor, chairman, PHIT Collaborative and senior vice president, Strategic Initiatives, National Community Pharmacist Association. “The PHIT Collaborative is focused on helping pharmacists to document and share clinical services in an interoperable way while ensuring pharmacists maximize workflow in a usable way.“
The revised roadmap reflects the areas the pharmacy profession needs to continue its focus and updates the Collaborative’s vision, mission, goals, and objectives to ensure the U.S. health information technology (HIT) infrastructure better enables pharmacists to optimize person- centered care. It provides guidance to provider organizations, policymakers, vendors, payers, and other stakeholders striving to integrate pharmacy HIT into the national (U.S.) HIT infrastructure.
“The Pharmacy HIT Collaborative is leading the push for interoperability in the pharmacy industry and is a great resource for forward-looking pharmacies,” said Peinie Young, director of Innovation Solutions, at Fuse. “At Cardinal Health, we share the vision of advancing pharmacists in their practice through technology and data sharing, and are honored to have a voice in this important framework.” “The work of the Pharmacy HIT Collaborative continues to richly inform development of the national health IT framework, ensuring pharmacy integration,” said Rebecca Chater, director, Clinical Healthcare Strategy, Omnicell. “This revised strategic plan includes elements that support active involvement of the pharmacist as a member of the health care team, well positioned to deliver patient-centered care and produce positive health outcomes.”
The updated roadmap outlines three strategic goals as the underpinnings to move pharmacists further into the national HIT infrastructure:
- Interoperability: Advance the adoption by pharmacists of systems capable of standards-driven health information exchange;
- Workflow and Usability for systems and providers;
- Quality: Support national quality initiatives enabled by HIT.Over the past eight years, the Collaborative has made significant accomplishments in areas related to government outreach, education, standards development work, and coding impacting the pharmacy profession. Since 2010, the government has been working on building a health IT foundation. The Collaborative works with the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) to assure pharmacists are recognized as an integral part of the health IT infrastructure. The Collaborative’s roadmap focuses on the implications to the pharmacy profession as it relates to ONC’s 10-Year Vision to Achieve an Interoperable Health IT Infrastructure.“As a member of the Pharmacy HIT Collaborative since its founding, APhA recognizes the important achievements of the Collaborative and the substantial work that remains to create the health IT infrastructure required to support current and future advances in pharmacy practice. APhA remains deeply committed to this initiative by engaging members and staff in the process of identifying the effective integration and use of electronic health records in pharmacy practice,” said Thomas Menighan, executive vice president and chief executive officer of the American Pharmacists Association.
