UC San Francisco and Walgreens (NYSE: WAG) (Nasdaq: WAG) have opened a unique Walgreens store today on the UCSF campus that aims to improve medication safety, decrease health care costs and help patients use medicines more effectively by offering pharmacist-based patient care and expanded health and wellness services to the community. A joint effort among Walgreens, the UCSF School of Pharmacy and UCSF Medical Center, "Walgreens at UCSF" will also explore new models for improving overall patient care.
"Walgreens at UCSF is an ideal environment for our pharmacists to work with UCSF Medical Center and School of Pharmacy faculty to further innovate in health care while providing greater access to services for the surrounding community," said Joel Wright, Walgreens divisional vice president, specialty solutions group. "At Walgreens, we are very pleased to share and develop best practices with UCSF pharmacists and pharmacy students, which further our commitment to help people get, stay and live well." Walgreens at UCSF, located across the street from UCSF Medical Center, is one of Walgreens "Well Experience" stores, which offer expanded health services and are designed to foster increased patient-pharmacist interaction. With an expanded pharmacy including multiple areas for private consultations, Walgreens and UCSF pharmacists and UCSF pharmacy students are more accessible to community members and patients.
Core clinical health services include medication counseling by a pharmacist as the standard of care and comprehensive medication reviews for customers who receive prescriptions. Pharmacists will work with patients to create and update accurate, portable medication lists to take to their appointments with medical providers. This approach can help decrease drug-drug interactions and encourage patient medication adherence.
"Modern medicine has transformed many diseases from urgent, life-threatening conditions into chronic illnesses that can be managed with the right medications, but that means more and more patients are juggling multiple prescriptions, with complex instructions," said Joseph Guglielmo, PharmD, a leader in the field of clinical pharmacy and dean of the UCSF School of Pharmacy. "And, in many instances, this complicated medication list is inaccurate and incomplete. This collaboration aims to transform the practice of community pharmacies to enable pharmacists to do what they're trained to do, which is helping patients manage their health with the right medications and understand how to take them correctly."
The collaboration builds upon Walgreens' leadership in pioneering new approaches to pharmacy care, as well as UCSF's long history of collaboration in teaching, research and patient care between the School of Pharmacy and UCSF Medical Center, which together piloted the first hospital-based clinical pharmacy program in the nation, in the 1960s.
The project comes at a time when an estimated 82 percent of Americans use daily medications to manage their health and 29 percent take five or more medications, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Yet the National Consumers League reports that three of every four Americans say they do not always take their medications as directed, and an estimated one-third of all patients do not fill their prescriptions. The result is a high rate of both medication errors and readmissions to hospitals for patients whose illnesses could have been managed at home.
