CP's Partner: Okay. Let's just jump into this one with both feet. How do you feel about metrics, especially as they regard flu shots and other vaccines?
CP: First off, I'd like to thank the Academy for allowing me to speak today. Secondly, as you are well aware, I am all for vaccinations and believe pharmacists are well-positioned in the community to meet the need. I love being able to help patients in this way.
CPP: Great. Now about the metrics related to shots?
CP: Yes. It is my personal belief that if you are truly interested in helping your community, if your stated goal is to provide healthcare to your patients, then you absolutely cannot set goals on how much help you provide.
CPP: Basically, telling your pharmacists that they don't care about their patients if they don't administer their minimum number of 1082 shots, runs contradictory to the statement about being in the business to help people.
CP: Precisely. Let's put a metric on preventing opiate overdoses. I can just see the email now: "Why didn't you administer any Narcan last week and save a life?! Don't you care about your community?"
CPP: Like a funeral home. People die all the time! Why didn't you bury more people this month?
CP: They said they were dying to get into the place across the street.
CPP: You need to bury more people to meet quota!
CP: Do they have to be dead? Is kidnapping illegal? Or just slightly frowned upon?
CPP: I also love how corporate loves to give us statistics but I wonder if they ever read them or, better yet, know how to interpret them.
CP: I had to laugh. Remember a few years ago I ran the stats on how many patients receive flu shots, on average, each year?
CPP: Yeah. It was around 45%.
CP: Yes. And that number is relatively unchanged year over year. What's funny is our DM recited that stat back to us the other year in one of her meetings.
CPP: Really?
CP: Yes. I did the research and she unknowingly repeated my own stats to me.
CPP: That's funny. You never told me that.
CP: The point is, the acceptance rates of patients remain relatively unchanged, perhaps increasing by 1% or 2% per year. If the goal of community pharmacy is help people, to become a full service healthcare destination, they need to stop treating our services as a competition; they need to stop holding these metrics over our head like Damocles' sword.
CPP: Agreed. Allow us to do our jobs.
CP: I went into this business to help people; cliched, I know. I did not go into pharmacy to be bullied by corporate overlords. So far, we have had flu shots for 7 days and had 3 conference calls, multiple texts to report our numbers, phone calls to report our numbers and a few stores have been visited by Ramsay Bolton.
CPP: It's either you care about people and want them to be healthy, or it's a competition.
CP: Just like you can't force people to compete in a marathon, or Monopoly, or D&D, you can't force people to make a competition out of healthcare.
CPP: You also can't force people to receive something they don't want.
CP: Enemas all around! Seriously though. You simply cannot claim to be focused on patient health and all the valuable services you provide whilst also telling your employees they don't care about their patients or their jobs if they don't meet these arbitrary metrics tied to this one sector of healthcare.
#IfTheyMeasureItItsNotToHelpYou
#ItsAllAboutTheGreed
#GetYourFluShotSaveMyJob
No comments:
Post a Comment