Clinical Pharmacist Integration Into Veterans' Primary Care: Team Members Perspectives

Background: With the restructuring of primary care into patient-centered medical homes (PCMH), researchers have described role transformations that accompany the formation of core primary care teamlets (eg, primary care provider, registered nurse care manager, licensed practical nurse, medical support assistant). However, few studies offer insight into how primary care teamlets, once established, integrate additional extended team members, and the factors that influence the quality of their integration.

Methods: We examine the process of integrating Clinical Pharmacy Specialists (CPS) into primary care teams in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). We conducted semi-structured interviews with CPS (n = 6) and clinical team members (n = 16) and performed a thematic analysis of interview transcripts.

Results: We characterize 2 ways CPS are integrated into primary care teamlets: in consultative roles and collaborative roles. CPS may be limited to consultative roles by team members' misconceptions about their competencies (ie, if CPS are perceived to handle only medication-related issues like refills) and by primary care providers' opinions about distributing responsibilities for patient care. Over time, teams may correct misconceptions and integrate the CPS in a more collaborative role (ie, CPS helps manage disease states with comprehensive medication management).

Conclusions: CPS integrated into collaborative roles may have more opportunities to optimize their contributions to primary care, underscoring the importance of clarifying roles as part of adequately integrating advanced practitioners in interprofessional teams.