Opportunities to improve clinical outcomes and challenges to implementing clinical pharmacists into health care teams.

Abstract

Improving patient care outcomes is achieved through communication, collaboration, and coordination of care between various health care professionals in all health care practice settings. The foundation of this patient-centered model approach includes the recognition of pharmacists as drug therapy experts and, therefore, as members of the health care team who provide a unique set of knowledge and skills. This article focuses on improving clinical outcomes by integrating clinical pharmacists into health care teams, and addresses the obstacles and solutions to achieving this goal.