Kerr pushes the boundaries of pharmacy care

Drug Store News, Dec 17, 2001 by James Frederick

As such, the sites serve as teaching facilities for the pharmacy school, as laboratories for new clinical-care concepts and as classrooms for a variety of community health efforts in areas such as smoking cessation and disease prevention or treatment.

"We've got a network of pharmacists certified in different disease states," explained Mark Gregory, Kerr's director of pharmacy. "It was important to put together a clinical team to make this work."

In addition, he said, "We've been able to 'seed' our EPCCs with community residents ... who provide a bridge to the pharmacy school and a mechanism to help deliver these services."

Added Chater: "This is a place where advanced pharmacy students can see their training put into practice. They'll be looking for this kind of setting when they graduate."

Supplemental offerings

Among other services EPCC staffers offer are blood glucose testing, review and consultation for diabetics--with tests and consultation offered recently at the modest fee of $10. Cholesterol tests are available on appointment for $15 to $35, depending on the level of testing done. Kerr's care centers also provide programs and classes in health topics such as cancer, osteoporosis, women's health, hypertension and smoking cessation.

Petri called it "need-based patient care that isn't totally riding on how fast you can get the prescriptions out the door."

Chater has also set up a mobile team of clinical-care pharmacists who extend Kerr's health counseling and screening efforts into the community. "We're looking to establish community partnerships with schools, health fairs, senior centers," said Stefanie Ferreri, Pharm.D., a UNC faculty coordinator who works out of the Kerr EPCC in Chapel Hill. "We can connect in lots of ways--with PTAs, nurse associations, you name it. And once you do a health fair well, you get called all the time."

Indeed, clinical-care pharmacists from Kerr's EPCC centers participated last spring in a massive bone density screening effort, underwritten by a major pharmaceutical company, at a special women's health pavilion tent set up at the LPGA tournament near Kerr's headquarters. "We had two stations set up for density screenings and two counseling areas at each station," said Chater. "We were able to screen more than 1,200 women. That's pharmacy at its finest. We were able to do what we do best, and there was compensation for it."

Seniors' Summit

In late summer, Kerr also held a Seniors' Summit at headquarters, which Kerr's director of marketing Diane Eliezer chaired, to update key community health leaders and others on the chain's clinicalcare and marketing efforts on behalf of seniors--and to develop better plans for reaching that group. Among those who participated were many members of Kerr's management staff, including Petri, Gregory, Chater and Ferreri, as well as representatives of North Carolina's Senior PHARMAssist program, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Health Access Coalition and the University of North Carolina.