The Role of Pharmacy in Community Health

The commitment to patient well-being reinforces Legacy Community Health’s overarching goal – creating healthier communities by ensuring healthcare access for all.

Legacy pharmacists serve as patient advocates and educators, taking the time to explain medication regimens, ensuring patients understand potential side effects, and monitoring adherence to treatments. This proactive engagement leads to better patient outcomes, particularly for those managing chronic conditions.

All of Legacy Pharmacy’s clinical pharmacists undergo post-graduate training to be ambulatory care pharmacists specializing in chronic disease management. “The programs that we offer here at Legacy are for hypertension, diabetes, dyslipidemia (cholesterol), tobacco cessation, and weight management,” Neha says.

Clinical pharmacists play a unique and indispensable role in bridging the gap between doctor visits and daily medication management. She notes the collaborative practice agreement between clinical pharmacists and physicians, explaining that, “when a physician signs on with us, we’re able to do everything for the patient under that purview except diagnose.”

This means Legacy Community Health’s clinical pharmacists “are able to change medications. We have prescribing privileges. We’re able to alter, change, stop medications under that disease state. We can order labs and we can make sure that the patient has continuity of care, a follow-up appointment with their PCP, or also any other wraparound services that the patient may need, like dental, vision, transportation, social services, things of that nature.”

Additionally, while follow-up doctor visits are usually three to four months out, clinical pharmacists have more frequent patient interactions. “By having those multiple [pharmacy] follow-ups in between the clinician visits, we’re… essentially holding their hand while getting them to goal while minimizing the side effects,” she explains.

“It is a much better collaboration between the patient, the physician, and the pharmacist, and we all work very well together to ensure that the patient is reaching their goal. And most of the time, after the patient has seen a clinical pharmacist two times, they are either reaching their target or improving. Seventy-five percent of our patients are reaching their target or improving towards their goal after two visits with the clinical pharmacy specialist. When the next visit comes along three to four months later, the patient is doing really well and can show off for their provider.”

In addition to its other services, Legacy Community Health has a longstanding commitment to HIV education and patient support. Legacy Pharmacy plays an important part in this, offering everything from counseling to medication dispensing.

“One of the things that our pharmacist does is typically counseling,” Kevin says. “Somebody could come in for HIV testing, get diagnosed with HIV, and actually will leave with HIV medication the same day. So pharmacists spend a lot of time going over how to take those medications, what their lab results mean, and spend some time educating clients newly diagnosed with HIV about their condition. That’s something that we have been experts at and that we’ve been doing for quite some time.”

About Legacy Community Health Services, Inc.

Legacy Community Health Services (Legacy) is a full-service network of over 60 community health centers offering primary and specialty care, and pharmacy services in the Texas Gulf Coast region. Legacy has been innovating how comprehensive, quality health care services are provided to underserved communities for over 40 years. As the largest Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) in Texas, our services and programs are open to all, regardless of the ability to pay, without judgment or exception. Legacy has been a United Way affiliated agency since 1990. To learn more, visit www.legacycommunityhealth.org.