Price Chopper Diabetes Program Earns Pharmacists’ Kudos
Price Chopper Supermarkets has received national recognition from the American Pharmacists Association (APhA) Foundation’s “Project IMPACT: Diabetes” for helping to improve care for people with diabetes. Schenectady, N.Y.-based Price Chopper was one of 25 pharmacy operators across the United States to be so honored. The other supermarket pharmacies involved in the project are Balls Food Stores and Kroger.
Through Project IMPACT: Diabetes, Price Chopper Pharmacy created a comprehensive diabetes care program for patients in Schenectady and Albany counties. The initiative dovetailed with such other Price Chopper initiatives as the “Diabetes AdvantEdge” program, which gives patients free diabetes medication, supplies and testing meters.
The grocery chain’s adoption of the NuVal Nutrition Scoring system also aided the effort by helping patients choose more healthful foods.
Additionally, Price Chopper Pharmacy joined forces with Capital District Physicians’ Health Plan (CDPHP) and Whitney M. Young Health Center to expand the programs and boost access to care for people disproportionately affected by diabetes, and the grocer’s pharmacists and registered dietitians met individually with patients to offer diabetes education, medical nutrition therapy and shopping tours.
Better Outcomes
The project aimed to increase the percentage of patients who met composite Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) measures, and improve patients’ blood pressure, cholesterol and hemoglobin A1c results through pharmacist-delivered education and training. Health plans employ HEDIS to gauge performance of critical aspects of care and service. Price Chopper’s program lowered hemoglobin A1c by 0.6 percent, a statistically significant measurement.
“The Affordable Care Act has expanded our opportunities to collaborate with our community health care partners in providing cost-effective care and improving patient outcomes,” noted Kathy Bryant, Price Chopper’s VP of pharmacy. “Our participation in Project IMPACT: Diabetes has allowed us to offer innovative health care program models which align nicely with this goal.”
Project IMPACT: Diabetes was launched in 2010 by the APhA Foundation in partnership with the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation's "Together in Diabetes" initiative as the first national research program to integrate pharmacists into diabetes care teams in at-risk, underserved communities.
The Golub Corp. owns and operates 132 Price Chopper grocery stores in New York, Vermont, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. The family-managed company’s 22,000 associates collectively own more than 50 percent of the company’s privately held stock, making it one of the nation’s largest privately held corporations that is predominantly employee-owned.