Expanding Access to Health Care Services: Three Models of Pharmacy Access

Authors

Chelsea Boyd

Resident Research Fellow, Harm Reduction

Key Points

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Background

Accessing health care can be a complicated and time-consuming process. For some individuals, coordinating transportation, child care, time away from work, and other logistical challenges can make it difficult to attend a medical appointment. Societal factors, such as shortages of health care providers and lack of insurance coverage, compound logistical challenges. Taken together, these issues are so pervasive that the focus of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Healthy People 2030 is “helping people get timely, high-quality health care services.”

Implementing policies that allow pharmacists to provide an expanded range of services—such as vaccination, point-of-care diagnostics and screenings, and the prescription of some medications—is one solution to address some of the challenges Americans face when seeking health care services. Policymakers often use one of three models to expand pharmacists’ ability to provide additional services: statewide standing orders and protocols; collaborative practice agreements (CPAs); and direct/independent prescribing.

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