Beyond the Prescription: 20 Years of Advanced Practice Pharmacy

Introduction


Host Sonja Pagniano (  / sonja-pagniano  ) , Executive Director of the NCPA Foundation (https://www.ncpafoundation.org/) , interviews guest Dr. Diana Arouchanova, PharmD, APh (  / dianaarouchanova  ) , Owner of Clinicare Pharmacy and APP Care Center in Northridge, California (  / clinicare-pharmacy-inc  ) . The episode celebrates Diana's 20-year journey in pharmacy ownership, exploring how she transformed a small neighborhood pharmacy into an innovative advanced practice care center. Diana shares her patient-centered approach that goes beyond traditional dispensing, discusses her pharmacy residency program partnership with USC Alfred E. Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences (  / uscmann  ) , and reveals how community pharmacies serve as essential healthcare lifelines during and after emergencies. Her story demonstrates the evolving role of independent pharmacy in integrated healthcare delivery and offers insights on training the next generation of pharmacists.


Interview


Sonja: Hi, this is your host for the Script Your Future podcast, Sonja Pagniano, the Executive Director of the NCPA Foundation. I am so excited to bring today's guest, Diana Arouchanova. She is coming to us from California. Diana, how are you?


Diana: Thank you. How are you?


Sonja: I'm good, thanks. So, tell us a little bit about your pharmacy and where you're located.


Diana: Thanks for having me, first of all. It's such a pleasure and fun to be here. And thank you for the warm introduction. So… I am… an advanced practice pharmacist. I practice in the state of California, and I own and operate Clinicare Pharmacy (  / clinicarepharmacy  ) , an advanced practice pharmacy care center. Since actually 2005.


Sonja: So, we're coming up on your 20 year anniversary in December, right?


Diana: Exactly.


Sonja: That's incredible. Congratulations on 20 years of pharmacy ownership this year. Can you tell us a little bit about what advanced practice means, especially for me as someone with no pharmacy background at all? …I'd love to learn more.


Diana: Sure. So advanced practice pharmacy is relatively a new term, not that new, but relatively new term in the practice of pharmacy.


And in California specifically, we actually have a separate licensure category right now for pharmacists with advanced training who can take certain classes and pass certain examinations, post-residency and whatnot, and actually be also licensed as advanced practice pharmacists. These are people with advanced training who actually do things outside of traditional dispensing practice. Before even advanced practice pharmacy was a thing, um, in, within our profession, um, couple of decades ago, there was something that I thought, um, was important for me to do.


So, I have, introduced that in my practice when I founded Clinicare. So, I was not just seeing patients for traditional pharmacy prescriptions you know prescriptions would come in 20 years ago people would walk in that doesn't happen much anymore because everything is e-prescribed nowadays every single prescription for me was an opportunity to actually interact with the patients and see beyond that prescription, look at the patient as a whole.


…I started doing that. I realized that that's the only and the best way to connect with the patients. So, I also started collecting a lot of data to see how are these interactions, my interactions with patients beyond that prescription on those prescriptions were actually affecting the patients too.


It was looking at their overall health and outcomes.


…Even before we started working under our many now collaborative practice agreements and before I got licensed as an advanced practice pharmacist many years ago, I was already practicing in that realm because I think that's the only way any pharmacist can actually have that really fulfilling experience. profession and practice at the top of their license is being part of that integrative team.


Advanced practice pharmacy isn't just a term. I know a lot of people look at it as a fancy term, but I think that's how every pharmacist should be working and practicing, irrespective of the setting they're in.


Sonja: Very very cool…I know it's becoming more common now, especially for students wanting to pursue pharmacy in that way, making sure that they're really serving the whole patient and not just dispensing medications. And some of them don't realize that you can do that through pharmacy ownership. So it's really great to hear that perspective that you've had, especially over so many years, like already doing that work. And it really just now starting to become recognized more in the profession. I think it's very exciting. And I think it really shows how important these pharmacies are for community-based health care access.


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