In looking at Encounter, it seems that trying to use it as a mechanism for capturing a pharmacy interaction outside of a hospital is a square peg/round hole situation given the transactional nature of the interaction.
Am I correct, or are there pharmacy organizations that are leveraging Encounter to capture the interaction between a patient and a pharmacy?
The one exception where Encounter does seem more relevant is in the specialty pharmacy space where the administration of the medication involves a visit to an outpatient facility or a visit from a home healthcare worker to perform the medication administration.
It’s not incorrect to capture an Encounter for any coming together between a health practitioner and a patient - even a simple phone call. The real question is whether there’s value to the pharmacy in capturing information at that level. Typically, Encounter is used because it’s a grouper for multiple actions/observations. In most community pharmacy encounters, there’s only one action, so having a ‘grouper’ doesn’t necessarily add value. However, as pharmacies expand services to include immunizations, counselling, medication reconciliation, certain diagnostic testing, etc. in addition to performing dispenses, the need for a grouper resource may increase.