UCSF and Walgreens to share data for pharmacy initiative

“Walgreens at UCSF”—a new initiative of UC San Francisco (UCSF) School of Pharmacy, UCSF Medical Center and Walgreens—aims to improve medication safety, decrease healthcare costs and help patients use medications more effectively by offering pharmacist-based patient care and expanded health and wellness services to the community.

Part of this partnership is the opening of a unique “Well Experience” Walgreens store on the UCSF campus that will offer expanded health services and are designed to foster increased patient-pharmacist interaction, according to a release. Through this arrangement, UCSF primary care physicians and Walgreens pharmacists will have joint access to patient prescription information, including dates prescriptions are filled; quantity of prescriptions; and type of prescriptions, according to a related San Francisco Chronicle article.  

The pharmacy will provide core clinical health services including medication counseling by a pharmacist and comprehensive medication reviews. Pharmacists will work with patients to create portable medication lists to take to their clinical appointments. “This approach can help decrease drug-drug interactions and encourage patient medication adherence,” according to the announcement.

“This collaboration aims to transform the practice of community pharmacies to enable pharmacists to do what they’re trained to do, which is helping patients manage their health with the right medications and understand how to take them correctly,” said Joseph Guglielmo, PharmD, dean of the UCSF School of Pharmacy, in a statement.