Integrating Clinical, Dispensing, and Fiscal Components for Continuity of Care: Chad Hatfield, PharmD, MHA, BCPS

Viewed as integral to UC Davis Health’s pharmacy growth strategy, having a shared services center allows the health system to focus on an all-encompassing patient care journey—one that integrates clinical, fiscal, and dispensing components of care. Built to achieve economies of scale and service consolidation for a catchment area that encompasses approximately 65,000 square miles, having a shared services facility means that patients likely no longer need to travel between facilities to get all their care, explained Chad Hatfield, PharmD, MHA, BCPS, chief pharmacy officer at UC Davis Health and assistant dean, UCSF School of Pharmacy, in an interview with The American Journal of Managed Care^® (AJMC^®).

The ability to also conduct all operations in 1 facility, and to have clinicians, billing specialists, and pharmacists involved, is also important to payers and policy makers because it addresses their interests in cost containment. Ultimately, having everything managed within their own health system ensures the continuity of care throughout the patient's entire experience, preventing care from being delivered piecemeal.

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

AJMC: Why is a shared services building an important part of your pharmacy strategy for growth?

Hatfield: At UC Davis Health, we really look at the shared service center as an integral role for our strategy, and most of it centers around our ability to encompass the patient in its entirety. What that really means is it looks at the clinical components, the fiscal components, and the dispensing components of the overall patient journey and really trying to make sure the patient is in the epicenter of everything that we do. As we look at just the number of patients that we have in the health system and who are coming through our doors, we really needed to see an ability for us to have economies of scale and to treat patients a little differently and not have them run around between facilities, respectfully. We really built this large facility in order to do a lot of outreach, specifically for us in Davis. We've got a pretty large geographical area that we cover—it's about 65,000 square miles—so there are a lot of patients who live quite far from our actual facilities. That is the main reason we really selected consolidating some of these services.

AJMC: What is unique about this facility that makes UC Davis Health stand apart from other health systems?

Hatfield: I think one of the biggest things is that lots of organizations do not have this capability, so they are doing it in a mismatched manner. This is not necessarily a knock on them. We have the shared service center. We have the capabilities, and as organizations really look at their ability to enhance the patient journey, we are further along than many as we look at that ability to do that. I think the consolidation that we have collectively has really put us into an opportune position for the future. The future is really today, and so we were really working heavily to enhance that service as patients move through our system.

AJMC: Why is this facility important to executive payers, policymakers, and industry?

Hatfield: I think the biggest thing is, for us, the capability. When we interact with payers, policy makers, and industry, they all have a different slant in what they're looking for. Some of it is cost containment, some of it is patient access and having a singular flow. It could be with your pharmaceutical partners, having a smaller chain in order to distribute the drugs out to the respective patients. We really can do everything in one facility, and we do it with our clinicians, we do it with our billing specialists, we do it with our pharmacists.

Ultimately, and this is really the mainstay, everything is within our own health system. That continuity of care between the first day that you walk into primary care to the last day that you walk out of our facility and maybe move to another organization or perhaps move to a new state, we really have taken care of you throughout your entire journey in the UC Davis Health health care system, and have not provided care piecemeal.