^* See endnote 1.

Pharmacists can free up physician time for complex cases and acute patient management. Additionally, pharmacists may identify issues between annual visits, triaging patients and escalating risk in real time, which is especially important for high-risk patients with diabetes.

Pharmacists typically have more time to spend with patients than physicians, and their clinical visits reflect this: initial appointments can last up to an hour, with follow-up visits around 30 minutes, compared with the usual 15 to 20 minutes for primary care or endocrinology visits.

Pharmacists can help prevent therapeutic inertia by ensuring timely medication adjustments and maintenance. They can provide targeted, individualized education and support for self-management, which can motivate patients to adhere to medications and attend follow-ups.

Pharmacists can play a key role in educating patients about medicines, such as incretins, and, and may help with medication access, coverage, and dose optimization. They can support personalized obesity management using body composition analysis and waist circumference and help patients manage side effects to improve medication adherence.

Adding pharmacists to care teams may help support improvements in A1C management compared to standard approaches alone.² Some pharmacists report that their programs help reduce pharmacy costs. These programs may also support weight management, which may reduce the need for antihypertensives and antidiabetics.

Pharmacists’ ability to provide and bill for direct patient care varies by state, which makes it difficult to standardize pharmacist roles and demonstrate return on investment to decision-makers.³

In many states, pharmacists lack provider status and cannot bill for patient visits. Thus, pharmacists must show the value of their services by freeing up other clinicians’ capacity to provide billable services or by demonstrating improved performance on value-based contracts. Even in states with provider status, variable billing processes across payers can still limit consistent use.

Communication among pharmacists and clinicians can be fragmented due to the use of multiple channels (electronic health record, email, chat platform, pager, text), which can lead to missed messages and hinder collaboration. Remote pharmacists may face additional challenges building trust and rapport without face time with prescribers and other clinicians.

Specialty teams sometimes lack clarity on pharmacist roles, often relegating them to prior authorization and cost troubleshooting rather than clinical functions. Building trust in pharmacists as clinicians is an ongoing challenge, especially in organizations unfamiliar with their full scope of practice.

Lilly unites caring with discovery to create medicines that make life better for people around the world. We've been pioneering life-changing discoveries for nearly 150 years, and today our medicines help more than 51 million people across the globe. Harnessing the power of biotechnology, chemistry and genetic medicine, our scientists are urgently advancing new discoveries to solve some of the world's most significant health challenges, redefining diabetes care, treating obesity and curtailing its most devastating long-term effects, advancing the fight against Alzheimer's disease, providing solutions to some of the most debilitating immune system disorders, and transforming the most difficult-to-treat cancers into manageable diseases. With each step toward a healthier world, we're motivated by one thing: making life better for millions more people. That includes delivering innovative clinical trials that reflect the diversity of our world and working to ensure our medicines are accessible and affordable. To learn more, visit Lilly.com and Lilly.com/news/press-releases or follow us on Facebook, Instagram, X and LinkedIn.

This quick guide is sponsored by Lilly, an Advisory Board member organization. Representatives of Lilly helped select the topics and issues addressed. Advisory Board experts wrote the report, maintained final editorial approval, and conducted the underlying research independently and objectively. Advisory Board does not endorse any company, organization, product or brand mentioned herein.

To learn more, view our editorial guidelines.