This summer, Casey Dang joined Ursamin’s team for an 8-week practicum. During his time with us, Casey conducted a vital research project, uncovering how communication gaps between primary care providers and pharmacists can put patients and providers at risk.
Through interviews with 20 pharmacists across various settings (retail, independent, specialty, and compounding), Casey found a consistent problem: essential information for safe medication dispensing often arrives at the pharmacy late, incomplete, or unusable. This disconnect creates ripple effects across the care team:
Impact on Patients
- Delayed medications: Patients wait longer for critical medications due to missing details like diagnosis codes, lab results, or pediatric weights.
- Medication error risks: Duplicate or conflicting prescriptions from different providers increase the chance of errors.
- Patient confusion: Patients are often left to relay complex medical information themselves.
Impact on Providers
- Increased administrative burden: Physicians, pharmacists, and their teams waste time (10-40 minutes per issue) chasing missing information via phone and fax.
- Compliance and legal risks: Incomplete medication histories or patient records pose compliance and legal challenges.
- Frustration and inefficiency: Poor communication erodes trust within the care team.
These challenges stem from fragmented communication, incompatible systems, and “middlemen” in eScript processing. These issues create blind spots that even the most dedicated clinicians can’t fully overcome.
At Ursamin, we’re actively researching and addressing these pain points. We design tools that connect primary care to the extended care team with accurate, real-time information. Casey’s work reinforces our daily observations: solving care coordination isn’t just about helping patients; it’s about enabling every clinician to work more efficiently, confidently, and collaboratively.
This work is one piece of a larger puzzle. Similar communication breakdowns occur in other areas, such as specialty referrals and post-discharge follow-up. We believe continued research is crucial to fully understand and resolve them.
If you’re interested in partnering on future studies, accessing the full report, or exploring how Ursamin can support your team, please reach out directly.
