The report found that pharmacists are being underutilized among accountable care organizations since only 57 percent of providers are contracting with pharmacists.

Accountable care organizations consist of a network in which payers, primary care physicians, and specialists work together to improve the health of a population. To dive deeper into one of the type of specialists seeking to enhance care within an accountable care organization, the Pharmacy Benefit Management Institute released a report detailing pharmacy trends within the ACO setting.

The study looked at more than 100 ACO providers among 6.5 million beneficiaries, according to a press release from the Pharmacy Benefit Management Institute. To provide additional information on drug benefit trends and the ongoing news from the ACO market, the Institute will publish four national industry reports from now on.

The report found that pharmacists are being underutilized among accountable care organizations since only 57 percent of polled providers are contracting with clinical pharmacists. Additionally, most of the respondents regard population health management as a vital part of running a successful accountable care organization.

The results show that 93 percent said managing population health is either “very or extremely important” while 98 percent stated that population health management will be targeted even more in the next three to five years.

One area that poses a problem for interoperability, care coordination, and data sharing is the fact that 59 percent of respondents from accountable care organizations use multiple EHR systems and 23 percent are still using paper-based charts. Not even one out of three respondents stated being on a single electronic medical record platform.

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