Albertsons’ empowerment gives pharmacists an edge
At the center of Albertsons Companies’ pharmacy strategy is patient care — and at the center of its patient care efforts are pharmacists who have been empowered to put their significant clinical education and skills to work.
Executives said the chain realized early on that making sure pharmacists are empowered to provide clinical services and build patient relationships — and thus loyalty — were two sides of the same coin.
“The priority is one and the same: to become very accessible to the patient, to remove friction and be able to improve their health care with whatever project we may be able to do,” said Dan Salemi, Albertsons group vice president of pharmacy services. “It drives the incremental sales, which is great, but it also builds that relationship with a patient that is ‘sticky’ and keeps them in our stores. To take care of that patient and be able to differentiate ourselves from our competition is going to pay off in the long run.”
Such services as medication therapy management, comprehensive medication reviews, diabetes management and immunizations are a cornerstone of Albertsons’ strategy — and they have been longer than there have been central metrics by which pharmacies are measured, from the perspective of both patients and payers.
“What was once ‘my hobby’ is now standard — MTM services is a very standardized service,” said Brian Hille, vice president of patient, specialty and wellness. “We put a huge amount of effort into making sure that our pharmacists can be successful with MTM services. It’s important to show our commitment to our partners that we’re going to do a good job taking care of our patients.”
Besides MTM, Albertsons was the first large national chain to offer immunizations in the late 1990s, and since then has made a point of ensuring it stays on the cutting edge of what services its pharmacies can offer. With regard to immunizations, in 2017, due to an Idaho law, Albertsons and Washington State University College of Pharmacy trained the first pharmacy technician in the nation to administer immunizations. In addition to adding an extra set of hands to the pharmacy, leaving pharmacists with more time for other clinical services, the offering has gotten technicians more invested in the job.
“When you go talk to them at the store directly and ask them how it’s going, they absolutely love it,” said Nikki Price, director of pharmacy operations at Albertsons’ Intermountain region. “They really take ownership from the initial conversation to after they give the immunization.”
Ahead of the tech immunization law being enacted, Albertsons participated in a pilot for the service, an approach it also used this past year when preparing for expanded prescribing authority — treatments for urinary tract infections, cold sores and gaps in care, particularly statins for patients with diabetes — in Idaho to take effect. In both instances, being an early adopter has been a way to set Albertsons’ pharmacists apart through their clinical capabilities.
“You want to be on the ground floor because if you’re waiting to see what’s going to happen, you get left behind,” said Mark Panzer, senior vice president of pharmacy, health and wellness. “If you’re the first to be able to test it, you can take advantage of that as a differentiating point with the consumer and the patient.”
Another differentiator in which Albertsons was getting in on the ground floor on was administering long-acting injectables, a service that began in Texas roughly seven years ago and has expanded to be a large part of how Albertsons sets its specialty offerings apart. In states where pharmacists can — 20 of the states the company operates in — they administer the drugs in a private consultation room when patients arrive to pick them up.
“The direction of travel for therapies in the future is towards long-acting. If you can get one dose once a month or once every three months, that’s fantastic, we just have to solve for the convenience and availability for the patient to receive the administration,” Hille said. So the company built a model in which a prescription goes to Albertsons’ care coordination center in Boise that handles the authorization and affordability, then pushes the prescription to the community pharmacy for administration. With these drugs, which include osteoporosis, opioid recovery and mental health treatments, being able to go to the local store is more than simply an increased convenience, it improves adherence and persistence as compared with traditional administration in a clinic.
“It really improves the convenience and takes the stigma away. Typically you go to a mental health clinic or recovery clinic and there’s a lot of stigma associated with those places. Unfortunately, American society has done that,” Hille said. “Coming into a Safeway, an Albertsons, a Vons, wherever to have this administered, nobody knows the difference.”
Albertsons found that when it comes to patients’ acceptance of pharmacist-administered injectables, it sits around 96%, and a meta-analysis found that its patients see a roughly 86% adherence rate, compared with adherence rates between 33% and 54% in other studies. The company has expanded into ventrogluteal injections and is eyeing subcutaneous administration of immunoglobulin to assist patients with the transition to self-administration at home.
Key to enabling all of these services, Hille said, has been making sure that a pharmacist’s time is not taken up entirely by administrative duties.
“I have this philosophy that I want to keep our pharmacists in the store patient-facing, and not working on administrative work,” he said, and as a result, many of the company’s clinical offerings are outlined for pharmacists through resources they can access before performing the service. “We give them a service outline that tells them how to perform the service and lets them use their education, training and relationships with their patients to change behaviors. In my opinion, that’s how pharmacists improve care,” Hille said.
The Albertsons’ approach boils down to leadership realizing that its pharmacists are the key to improving patient care and to setting the chain apart from competitors. “We look at scope of practice, and we look at anything that’s innovative and ask, ‘How do we be the first to market?’ You jump on those opportunities not because you’re going to be first and it’ll generate sales, but because it’s good patient care” Panzer said. “Pharmacists went to school for clinical outcomes and they have great clinical skills, so why not utilize them?”
Executives said the chain realized early on that making sure pharmacists are empowered to provide clinical services and build patient relationships — and thus loyalty — were two sides of the same coin.
“The priority is one and the same: to become very accessible to the patient, to remove friction and be able to improve their health care with whatever project we may be able to do,” said Dan Salemi, Albertsons group vice president of pharmacy services. “It drives the incremental sales, which is great, but it also builds that relationship with a patient that is ‘sticky’ and keeps them in our stores. To take care of that patient and be able to differentiate ourselves from our competition is going to pay off in the long run.”
Such services as medication therapy management, comprehensive medication reviews, diabetes management and immunizations are a cornerstone of Albertsons’ strategy — and they have been longer than there have been central metrics by which pharmacies are measured, from the perspective of both patients and payers.
“What was once ‘my hobby’ is now standard — MTM services is a very standardized service,” said Brian Hille, vice president of patient, specialty and wellness. “We put a huge amount of effort into making sure that our pharmacists can be successful with MTM services. It’s important to show our commitment to our partners that we’re going to do a good job taking care of our patients.”
Besides MTM, Albertsons was the first large national chain to offer immunizations in the late 1990s, and since then has made a point of ensuring it stays on the cutting edge of what services its pharmacies can offer. With regard to immunizations, in 2017, due to an Idaho law, Albertsons and Washington State University College of Pharmacy trained the first pharmacy technician in the nation to administer immunizations. In addition to adding an extra set of hands to the pharmacy, leaving pharmacists with more time for other clinical services, the offering has gotten technicians more invested in the job.
“When you go talk to them at the store directly and ask them how it’s going, they absolutely love it,” said Nikki Price, director of pharmacy operations at Albertsons’ Intermountain region. “They really take ownership from the initial conversation to after they give the immunization.”
Ahead of the tech immunization law being enacted, Albertsons participated in a pilot for the service, an approach it also used this past year when preparing for expanded prescribing authority — treatments for urinary tract infections, cold sores and gaps in care, particularly statins for patients with diabetes — in Idaho to take effect. In both instances, being an early adopter has been a way to set Albertsons’ pharmacists apart through their clinical capabilities.
“You want to be on the ground floor because if you’re waiting to see what’s going to happen, you get left behind,” said Mark Panzer, senior vice president of pharmacy, health and wellness. “If you’re the first to be able to test it, you can take advantage of that as a differentiating point with the consumer and the patient.”
Another differentiator in which Albertsons was getting in on the ground floor on was administering long-acting injectables, a service that began in Texas roughly seven years ago and has expanded to be a large part of how Albertsons sets its specialty offerings apart. In states where pharmacists can — 20 of the states the company operates in — they administer the drugs in a private consultation room when patients arrive to pick them up.
“The direction of travel for therapies in the future is towards long-acting. If you can get one dose once a month or once every three months, that’s fantastic, we just have to solve for the convenience and availability for the patient to receive the administration,” Hille said. So the company built a model in which a prescription goes to Albertsons’ care coordination center in Boise that handles the authorization and affordability, then pushes the prescription to the community pharmacy for administration. With these drugs, which include osteoporosis, opioid recovery and mental health treatments, being able to go to the local store is more than simply an increased convenience, it improves adherence and persistence as compared with traditional administration in a clinic.
“It really improves the convenience and takes the stigma away. Typically you go to a mental health clinic or recovery clinic and there’s a lot of stigma associated with those places. Unfortunately, American society has done that,” Hille said. “Coming into a Safeway, an Albertsons, a Vons, wherever to have this administered, nobody knows the difference.”
Albertsons found that when it comes to patients’ acceptance of pharmacist-administered injectables, it sits around 96%, and a meta-analysis found that its patients see a roughly 86% adherence rate, compared with adherence rates between 33% and 54% in other studies. The company has expanded into ventrogluteal injections and is eyeing subcutaneous administration of immunoglobulin to assist patients with the transition to self-administration at home.
Key to enabling all of these services, Hille said, has been making sure that a pharmacist’s time is not taken up entirely by administrative duties.
“I have this philosophy that I want to keep our pharmacists in the store patient-facing, and not working on administrative work,” he said, and as a result, many of the company’s clinical offerings are outlined for pharmacists through resources they can access before performing the service. “We give them a service outline that tells them how to perform the service and lets them use their education, training and relationships with their patients to change behaviors. In my opinion, that’s how pharmacists improve care,” Hille said.
The Albertsons’ approach boils down to leadership realizing that its pharmacists are the key to improving patient care and to setting the chain apart from competitors. “We look at scope of practice, and we look at anything that’s innovative and ask, ‘How do we be the first to market?’ You jump on those opportunities not because you’re going to be first and it’ll generate sales, but because it’s good patient care” Panzer said. “Pharmacists went to school for clinical outcomes and they have great clinical skills, so why not utilize them?”