Impact of credentialing and provider privileges on clinical interventions made by advanced practice pharmacists in California.

Background: The Advanced Practice Pharmacist (APh) licensure has provided an opportunity for pharmacists to expand their scope of practice in California; however, there have not been any studies in California assessing the interventions made by APhs as credentialed providers of care.

Objective: To assess the clinical interventions made by APhs as credentialed providers with clinical privileges in an independent community pharmacy.

Methods: This was a retrospective, observational study that assessed clinical interventions made by APhs on patients referred for disease state management between January 2018 and December 2018. Pharmacist interventions were stratified into 3 levels of provider care: full privilege (FP), limited privilege (LP), and no privilege.

Results: FP had the highest percentage of accepted recommendations (62.2% ± 20.1%), whereas LP and no privilege had lower percentages of accepted recommendations (41.9% ± 12.0% and 31.6% ± 3.7%, respectively) (P < 0.01).

Conclusion: APhs as credentialed providers with FP, or even LP, made more successful clinical interventions than those without any privileges.