"I absolutely love my job."
Forget the miles she puts on her car and the time she spends in transit.
"I absolutely love my job," reports Toby Horwitz, PharmD'00, a clinical pharmacist who works at three primary care clinics located in southern Michigan and northern Ohio.
While all three clinics are federally qualified health centers that primarily serve under- and uninsured patients, including migrant farm workers, the Toledo clinic is the only one with a dispensing pharmacy. Two of the clinics are affiliated with the Family Medical Center of Michigan, and the other is affiliated with a separate clinic network, Neighborhood Health Association of Toledo (NHAT).
Horwitz was hired in April 2001 through a Health Resources and Services Administration Clinical Pharmacy Demonstration Project Grant. The federal grant was made to the University of Toledo College of Pharmacy (UTCP) in partnership with the NHAT to evaluate how well such partnerships could administer disease state management programs in asthma, diabetes, and hypertension to underserved citizens.
Other project goals are to improve pharmacy formulary management, inventory control, and work flow.
The two-year demonstration project has been a success, Horwitz says, but that is no guarantee that program funding will continue.
"The uninsured and underinsured do not wield much clout with state or national legislatures," she observes. "With the economy in the doldrums, programs for such people are always vulnerable.
"I work with exceptional clinical faculty at the UTCP, who provide guidance and oversee my activities at the clinics," Horwitz adds. "My main role is to develop and implement clinical pharmacy services, which include disease state management programs with individual patients, serving as a drug information resource to providers, and being a preceptor to PharmD students from both the U-T and U-M."
The disease state management programs involve 30- to 60-minute appointments with individual patients, and are free of charge, notes Horwitz.
"I create nearly all of my own intake and assessment forms, but I also rely on the expertise and support of clinicians and pharmaceutical company specialists," Horwitz notes. "The pharmaceutical companies have been a generous source of free blood glucose meters and patient education materials."
Horwitz helps manage medication samples, connects patients to medication assistance programs, and dispenses medications as needed. In addition, she routinely informs clinic providers and staff on
pharmacy-related issues, such as new drug approvals/indications, drug comparison studies, Spanish medication information, drug utilization trends, and other issues.
She also keeps patient-chart records of all pharmacist interventions and disease state management consultations so that clinical data can be collected to document the impact of pharmaceutical care on patient outcomes.
"The most rewarding part of the job is traveling to the various clinics and interacting with the wonderful providers and patients," Horwitz says. "I have learned so much from working in community-based clinics and am very grateful for the experience. The biggest challenge is to provide the best pharmaceutical care and the most appropriate medications at the lowest possible cost to patients with little or no insurance and scant financial means."
Source:
http://sitemaker.umich.edu/copalumni/copalumniprofiles/_i_absolutely_love_my_job._
