Pharmacists sell startup business

Service provides remote oversight

Two Wichita pharmacists who created the state's first company to offer remote pharmacy services to rural hospitals have sold their business to Via Christi Health System.

Frontier Pharmacy Services, founded by Mark Gagnon and Tim Smith, uses remote-access technology to bridge the gap between rural Kansas communities and pharmacists caused by a national shortage of pharmacists.

The sale price was not disclosed.

Via Christi said it officially will launch the program this fall, first at its partner hospitals in Manhattan and Pittsburg and later to unaffiliated hospitals around the state that could use additional pharmacist oversight.

"I really see it as a way to enhance the pharmacy services we provide for patients," said Jim Garrelts, pharmacy director for the Via Christi Wichita Health Network. "It will enhance patient safety and expand the ability of our pharmacists to provide clinical services."

Via Christi officials cite studies that estimate the national supply of pharmacists is likely to fall short by 157,000 by 2020. Six Kansas counties have no pharmacists, and 31 have only one pharmacist or pharmacy.

Under the service, pharmacists review hospital medication orders over their computers for accuracy, potential drug interactions and efficacy, then enter the order electronically into a participating hospital's pharmacy system.

For the past year, Gagnon -- a pharmacist for Via Christi Regional Medical Center by day -- and Smith, who recently moved to the Kansas City area, have been servicing Coffeyville Regional Medical Center at night, but inquiries from rural communities in Kansas had started to pick up.

The partners decided to sell after concluding that Via Christi's name recognition and reach far exceeded their own.

"Via Christi already has a great outreach program and can really move this forward," said Gagnon, who will help lead the new program under Via Christi. "Via Christi can offer a lot more than we could. We were having to develop everything ourselves -- we were basically reinventing the wheel."

Garrelts said the hospital system, which had been looking into developing remote pharmacy services for a few years, also is working on a telepharmacy component that will use remote cameras in a two-way interactive system.

With that service, a pharmacist could oversee a pharmacy technician or nurse preparing prescriptions through a video system in real time. Via Christi will be working with the Kansas Board of Pharmacy to approve that service -- hopefully by Oct. 1, Garrelts said.

"As we got into talking about it, we realized (there are) many, many hospitals throughout Kansas who have very little pharmacy coverage, maybe once a week," he said. "We want to share the available pharmacists we do have to cover time at places currently not receiving optimal coverage."

The Via Christi network employs about 45 pharmacists.

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