Rural health systems' perceptions of referral to community pharmacists during transitions of care.

Objectives: To identify rural health systems' perceptions of value, benefits, barriers, and opportunities associated with community pharmacist involvement in patient transitions of care. Setting: Rural health systems in northwest and central Missouri. Practice description and innovation: Qualitative descriptive study of key informant interviews with self-identified decision makers of rural health systems within a 50-mile radius of 15 independent community pharmacy chain locations. Evaluation: Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and coded to evaluate themes in participant responses.

Results: Fifteen interviews were conducted at 8 rural health systems. Participants expressed significant value in community pharmacist involvement in transitions of care and highlighted several benefits, barriers, and opportunities related to potential collaboration. Benefits that were identified included medication monitoring, resource for patient information, and desire among health care providers to work with community pharmacists. Barriers included legal and regulatory issues with referral, communication, and prescriber utilization. Opportunities described included: patient education, monitoring, and follow-up; targeted interventions; medication access assistance; bedside medication delivery; and collaboration between community pharmacies and health care entities.

Conclusion: Rural health system informants perceived community pharmacy involvement to be valuable and were receptive to collaboration during transitional care to improve patient outcomes. They highlighted barriers to overcome to truly incorporate community pharmacists into the transitional care arena. Understanding these rural health systems' perceptions can guide community pharmacies in developing collaborative relationships and patient care services to assist with care transitions.