As today marks my final day at PQA in the role of CEO, I have taken some time to reflect on the past 15 years, and the opportunity that was presented to me in 2006 to build and lead a multi-stakeholder organization, the Pharmacy Quality Alliance. We set out to build a sustainable model for advancing the safe and appropriate use of medications through the development of meaningful and actionable quality measures that all stakeholders would have an opportunity to shape through a consensus-based process.

PQA’s Strategic Plan for 2021 is focused on three, timely initiatives for medication use quality: the social determinants of health, innovative pathways for measure development, and immunization services.

Anna Legreid Dopp, Senior Director of Clinical Guidelines and Quality Improvement at ASHP, spoke at PQA’s Data and Interoperability Advisory Group (DIAG) meeting on June 22. She discussed Electronic Clinical Quality Measures (eCQMs) and how we can use them to start thinking about pharmacy measures. ASHP is the organization that represents pharmacists who serve as patient care providers in acute and ambulatory settings.

Amber Baybayan, a Senior Clinical Services Associate at OutcomesMTM, spoke at PQA’s Data and Interoperability Advisory Group (DIAG) meeting on June 22. She discussed data integration in medication therapy management.

Shelly Spiro, Executive Director at Pharmacy HIT Collaborative, spoke at PQA’s Data and Interoperability Advisory Group (DIAG) meeting on June 22. She discussed the importance of data standards for collecting and sharing information about pharmacist-provided patient care and services.

Josh Howland, Vice President of Clinical Strategy at PioneerRX, provided a presentation on the Pharmacist eCare Plan (Plan) at PQA’s Data and Interoperability Advisory Group (DIAG) meeting on June 22.

CPESN^® USA is the Community Pharmacy Enhanced Services Network. It is a clinically integrated network of community pharmacies that coordinates patient care with broader care teams to provide medication optimization activities and enhanced services for high-risk patients. 

Data are the lifeblood of quality improvement.

The 2020 PQA Leadership Summit was a one-day, online event, November 5, focused on the social determinants of health. The event engaged summit attendees to help PQA determine the scope and focus of an SDOH resource guide that PQA will develop in 2021. PQA is focused on SDOH interventions that hold promise for improving the quality of medication use and where pharmacists are best positioned to provide screening, evaluation and services.

PQA is a non-profit organization with 250 diverse members across healthcare. Our members include community and specialty pharmacy organizations, pharmacists and other healthcare providers, pharmacies, health plans, pharmacy benefit managers, life sciences, technology vendors, government agencies, health information technology partners, researchers, accrediting organizations and academia.

PQA is a non-profit organization with 250 diverse members across healthcare. Our members include community and specialty pharmacy organizations, pharmacists and other healthcare providers, pharmacies, health plans, pharmacy benefit managers, life sciences, technology vendors, government agencies, health information technology partners, researchers, accrediting organizations and academia.

Medication Use Quality is an online PQA continuing education and certificate program for healthcare quality professionals, who are working to improve patient outcomes through safe and appropriate medication use. The program empowers professionals to understand and implement effective quality improvement programs across the healthcare industry.

Sachin Jain, MD, MBA, FACP, is President and CEO of SCAN Group and SCAN Health Plan. A nationally recognized innovator in health care, Jain joined SCAN this summer, where he is focused on pioneering new ways of improving quality and maintaining affordability for older adults.

Lisa Hines is PQA’s Vice President for Performance Measurement. She provides strategic direction for PQA’s performance measurement initiatives, including PQA’s approach to developing quality measures. Hines participated in a recent Quality Corner Show podcast to discuss PQA’s measure development process, which was recently updated. The podcast is hosted by Pharmacy Quality Solutions, and you can listen to the 20-minute podcast online.

The PQA Quality Forum Webinar is a regular, recurring series on healthcare quality topics with a focus on medication use and medication services. It is a forum for educating and engaging with PQA members and quality-focused healthcare professionals.

PQA, the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy and Janssen Scientific Affairs have collaborated to jointly host a "Postdoctoral Fellowship in Real World Evidence, Population Health, and Quality Research." The two-year fellowship aims to prepare an individual for a career in healthcare quality-related outcomes research.

The PQA Healthcare Quality Innovation Challenge (HQIC) is an annual national collegiate competition where student teams present technology-enabled solutions to improve healthcare quality. With the support of a faculty or pharmacy professional mentor, participating student teams develop a business summary proposal for their solution to one of three prompts provided by PQA. The prompts for the 2020-21 academic year are focused on pandemics, mental health and the social determinants of health.

Our nation’s universities and academic institutions educate and train the healthcare quality workforce. More than 40 colleges and schools of pharmacy are PQA members and they are important partners in our work to advance medication use quality, especially in education.

PQA is developing a set of standard pharmacy performance measures that would be appropriate for pharmacy accountability. This work began in early 2019 in response to interest from our members and policymakers in standard measures to evaluate the quality of pharmacies and assess pharmacist-provided care and pharmacy-based services.

The focus of PQA’s current work is the Pharmacy Measure Development Action Plan. The draft plan was released August 6 and outlines steps for developing measure concepts that have been prioritized based on their feasibility and usability. PQA seeks comment on the plan now through August 28. The plan builds on work that resulted in three PQA-endorsed pharmacy performance measures.

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PQA offers a new online continuing education and certificate program on Medication Use Quality. The program provides advanced training on quality measurement and strategies to improve medication safety, adherence and appropriate use. Pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, nurses and physicians can earn 15 accredited continuing education hours through the program.