NABP Community Pharmacy Accreditation Program to Focus on Patient Care

April 30, 2010 1:00 PM

With the goals of improving patient care and reducing medication errors, the NABP community pharmacy accreditation pilot program is scheduled to launch in summer 2010. The community pharmacy accreditation program will assist boards of pharmacy in ensuring that community pharmacies implement and maintain effective systems for measuring and improving patient care.

The program’s patient care focus will include several patient counseling and patient safety initiatives as part of its accreditation standards. For example, pharmacies will be expected to measure patient adherence to medication regimens and to document and report this data.

In addition to requiring that pharmacies develop and enforce policies guiding and monitoring patient care initiatives, the accredited pharmacies must ensure that pharmacy personnel are currently licensed. The program will also set requirements for how the pharmacy monitors situations related to disciplinary actions or other issues that may affect licensure.

Pharmacies must also implement and maintain continuous quality improvement programs and develop and enforce policies that guide and monitor patient data collection and patient privacy to meet accreditation standards.

With its focus on patient care the community pharmacy accreditation program can assist in realizing the Joint Commission of Pharmacy Practitioners (JCPP) “Future Vision of Pharmacy Practice,” which envisions that by 2015 “pharmacists will be the health care professionals responsible for providing patient care that ensures optimal medication therapy outcomes.” By assuring patient care services and monitoring care, the accreditation program can contribute to patient safety and help to create an environment in which patients look to pharmacists as the most trusted source of medications and the primary resource for advice regarding medication use.

Concurrent with the implementation of the pilot program, NABP will establish a steering committee that will periodically evaluate the program’s accreditation standards and approve or recommend changes. The committee will include industry stakeholders, pharmacy association representatives, and others, and will contribute to the development of uniform, multistate standards for community pharmacy, helping to achieve national recognition of the program as positively impacting patient care.