MANAGING PHARMACY CARE

This article was prepared from a lecture taken from Administrative Pha rmacy II, a community pharmacy management course for second profession al-year pharmacy students. The course focuses on management issues rel ated to community practice, including the processes of planning, organ izing, motivating and controlling. These management functions are then applied to various community pharmacy management issues such as third party reimbursement, providing pharmacy care services, personnel mana gement, reimbursement for cognitive services, inventory management and so on. The course utilizes didactic instruction with an interactive/d iscussion format in conjunction with case studies to teach the various management principles and applications. This combination of technique s with a focus on current issues facing community pharmacists has resu lted in a more practical than theory based management course. The conc epts planning, organizing, motivating and controlling have each been d iscussed prior to this lecture. This lecture discusses a managerial ap proach to conducting pharmacy care in the retail community pharmacy. W e will focus on how the basic management functions can be applied to d evelop, implement and manage pharmacy care services.