Pharmacists are often the patient's first, and sometimes only, point of access to health care services, thus, pharmacists can provide a valuable service to consumers at an affordable price. Tailor counseling about drug therapy to individual patient needs and help patients become more active participants in managing their own health care. Individually-tailored regimens will increase consumer confidence in pharmacists while increasing patient compliance. We are in a health care revolution, of which, pharmacists are part. Pharmaceutical care cannot and should not be isolated from this new movement.
Pharmacists are the most accessible health care professionals.
They help assure appropriate patient outcomes, especially through oral counseling and drug therapy management, and new disease-specific therapy management. Pharmaceutical care, which is a new term for an old idea, is the link that brings consumers and pharmacists together. While all of this, in theory, sounds great, it is meaningless unless it its put into practice on an everyday, every patient basis. A study, headed by University of Kansas School of Pharmacy Dean Jack Fincham and University of California at San Francisco Clinical Professor of Pharmacy Paul Lofholm, focused on how diabetes care improves patient compliance. The number of patients in the study who underwent monthly foot examinations doubled, from 35 percent at the beginning of the study to 70 percent.