But it s been an uphill struggle. When Neel was elected president of the Georgia Pharmacy Association in 1963, he tried to implement many of his new ideas and philosophies. Many of the innovative concepts and practices he espoused eventually came into wide use, and some are still in wide use today. Initially, however, there was strong resistance. What we came to learn, he says, is that it s better to practice what you preach to set an example rather than try to make others follow along.
People are generally resistant to change.
In 1997 Neel decided to retool his company s focus away from dispensing activities and build his practice completely on clinical consulting. At first his consulting activities were narrowly focused on medication use and directly related issues, but as time went on he saw the need to develop a whole new platform for integrated delivery of long-term care in partnership with other health care professionals. We ve developed a broad umbrella incorporating other disciplines in a unified protocol for long-term care, Neel says. Registered nurses were hired to go into ambulatory patients homes for quality assurance visits, providing care in a far less time-consuming, far more efficient manner. IPC developed new programs integrating occupational and rehabilitation therapy that were implemented by the facility and monitored by IPC s quality assurance team.