Practice Advancement Initiative (PAI)
You may be aware that the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) is promoting the advancement of pharmacy practice through an initiative called the Practice Advancement Initiative (PAI), which was formerly known as the Pharmacy Practice Model Initiative (PPMI). This initiative began in 2010 when over 150 hospital and health-system pharmacy leaders gathered at the PPMI Summit to determine key areas of focus to position pharmacy for the future. In 2014, an ambulatory care summit was held to discuss goals and develop recommendations focused on pharmacists working in an ambulatory care setting within a hospital or health system.
The overarching vision is that pharmacists will be the members of the interdisciplinary health care team who are responsible and accountable for patients’ medication outcomes. ASHP has created a website with many resources to aid pharmacists as they implement strategies to improve the use of medications in their facilities. The name change to PAI is to recognize the broad range of pharmacist services and care settings and reinforce that this is a comprehensive national program. The overarching goal of the PAI is to improve pharmacy practice and patient care nationwide in both acute and ambulatory care settings.
Among the tools available to all hospital pharmacies, regardless of ASHP membership status, is an online self-assessment questionnaire. There are two versions of the self-assessment – one for evaluating ambulatory care services and one for hospital-based services. The leadership of the Louisiana Society of Health-System Pharmacists (LSHP) would like to encourage each hospital/health-system in Louisiana, large and small, to complete the self-assessment. It doesn’t matter if your hospital is large with many clinical practice areas or small with only a few employees handling clinical and technical duties. Participation in the self-assessment will provide you with information that may help guide your facility in identifying opportunities for improvement. Currently, Louisiana PPMI self-assessment submissions are listed at 5 to 10% – the second lowest tier reported by ASHP. So, it is a great time for Louisiana’s hospital and health-system pharmacists to become involved.
Completing the self-assessment will not only help you understand your strengths and weaknesses but it will help you to understand how you compare on a state and national level. You will receive an overall score that you can use to track your progress. ASHP members and LSHP leaders can access additional reports to help them compare their results to both state and national participants. Your responses are confidential. No one else will know your score. Your participation will also help LSHP better understand the educational needs of our members as well as keep members informed of national progress. The self-assessment and corresponding action plan will take about 45 minutes to complete. Please visit the PAI website at http://ashpmedia.org/pai for further information, resources and tools, and links to the self-assessments.