New Pocatello clinical pharmacy aims to treat as well as educate
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POCATELLO — A pharmacy that fills prescriptions for education too officially opened Wednesday.
The Snell’s Pharmacy Shop Clinical and Diabetes Center has been operational for a year.
Clinical pharmacist and Snell’s instructor Debbie Marchetti told EastIdahoNews.com that the goal of a clinical pharmacy is to fill a gap between treatment and education.
She said that when a person is diagnosed as having diabetes or being prediabetic, they are prescribed medication. They then fill that prescription at a pharmacy like Snell’s before returning home to search the disease online.
“That is such a hole in appropriate patient care,” she said.
This new program, Marchetti said, will provide patients with personalized education about the disease and proper treatment.
Ben Snell, who has owned the family business for about two years, said pharmacists like Marchetti are a wealth of knowledge. It has been Snell’s plan “for years,” he said, to open a clinical pharmacy attached to the pharmacy shop.
“We’re trying to help educate people instead of just fulfilling a prescription,” Snell concluded.
There are two separate programs. For patients who have been diagnosed as diabetic, the class begins with an hour-long, one-on-one meeting with a pharmacist. During the onboarding interview, the pharmacist will assess the patient’s knowledge of the disease and what equipment and medications they use to treat it.
The patient then completes nine classes, set up to educate them on their specific needs. The classes can be completed at the patient’s pace, Marchetti said.
Classes for diagnosed pre-diabetic patients are a bit more extensive.
Those patients will complete 22 classes over 12 months — starting with weekly classes, then biweekly and finally monthly classes.
Although the classes for diabetic patients are designed to educate about the “journey,” as Marchetti called it, of life with diabetes, the pre-diabetic classes are about changing lifestyles in order to prevent a diabetes diagnosis.
Over the past year, Snell’s clinical pharmacy has graduated one class of each patient type. All 15 pre-diabetic patients, Marchetti said, completed the course successfully — most lost around 30 pounds, while one of the patients lost more than 50.
The class of patients with diabetes included 17 patients, 14 of whom completed that course successfully — making significant lifestyle changes.
“To be successful, there are guidelines, and you have to hit certain parameters. Exercise, weight — we typically want to lose 5% of a person’s body weight,” Snell said.
Following its successful first classes, the program has been recognized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Diabetes Association.
Marchetti said that the plan is to launch a new pre-diabetic class quarterly. Once the program has established itself, Snell hopes to expand its coverage and begin educational and treatment classes for heart disease and hypertension.
The clinical pharmacy is at 1017 East Young Street in Pocatello. It is open Monday to Friday, 9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
For more information about the program, visit the website — here.
