Interventions for integration of community pharmacy and primary care
| Intervention | Concept |
| Implementation of a bidirectional communication channel | Establish effective communication methods to enable the exchange of information and feedback between community pharmacists and primary care professionals. |
| Protocol standardisation | Create shared decision-making algorithms for various health procedures, such as hypertension, asthma or diabetes, facilitating the sharing of screenings, management and monitoring among healthcare professionals. |
| Community engagement and health education initiatives | Foster consensus-driven initiatives between patients and healthcare professionals to tackle a variety of health topics, on healthy behaviours including diet, alcohol consumption, smoking and physical activity; therapeutic adherence; and the importance of self-care. |
| Participation in health campaigns | Coordinate health campaigns between community pharmacy and primary care to develop clear and cohesive messages that strengthen health campaigns for health prevention and promotion. |
| Therapeutic management from community pharmacy | Establish collaborations for enhanced care. This includes dose adjustments, medication renewals with doctor’s approval and local dispensing to minimise hospital visits, aiming to improve care continuity and medication management, pending legislative updates for contractual integration. |
| Access to pharmacotherapeutic history from community pharmacy | Enable community pharmacists to access patients’ medication histories for proactive pharmaceutical care. They could incorporate biopsychosocial information, over-the-counter drugs or private prescriptions that may interact with prescribed treatments. |
| Collaboration for multidisciplinary team strengthening | Facilitate activities aimed at joint education and time-sharing among health professionals to promote mutual understanding, trust building, and consensus achievement. This includes regular meetings and collaborative clinical sessions, conferences involving pharmacists, physicians, and scientific societies, workplace visits, and the creation of integration maps detailing the health centres and community pharmacies in the area. |