ASHP Foundation Pharmacy Forecast 2021: Strategic Planning Advice for Pharmacy Departments in Hospitals and Health Systems

The ASHP Foundation Pharmacy Forecast has been a valuable source of insight and guidance about our profession as it is influenced by or influences external factors in our environment. ASHP and the ASHP Research and Education Foundation (“the Foundation”) present this ninth edition of the annual Pharmacy Forecast and are pleased to disseminate the Pharmacy Forecast through AJHP, providing readers with easy access to the report. The staff of AJHP has provided substantial editorial support for this publication, and we appreciate their assistance. The Pharmacy Forecast is a vital component of ASHP’s efforts to advance pharmacy practice leadership, and the Foundation appreciates the many pharmacists and others who have contributed to the David A. Zilz Leaders for the Future fund, which provides the resources to develop the report. The Foundation is also grateful to Omnicell for their support of the Zilz fund, which has made the Pharmacy Forecast possible. The Pharmacy Forecast could not be created without the contributions of the report’s founding editor, William Zellmer; members of the Forecast 2021 Advisory Committee; Forecast Panelists (FPs) who responded to the forecast survey; and chapter authors. ASHP and the Foundation are indebted to those individuals who have helped make the 2021 edition a success. Over the past 8 years, the Pharmacy Forecast has provided insight into emerging trends and phenomena that have impacted the practice of pharmacy and the health of patients in health systems. The value of the report is determined by its value to health-system pharmacists and health-system pharmacy leaders as they use the report to inform their strategic planning efforts. The Pharmacy Forecast is not intended to be an accurate prediction of future events. Rather, the report is intended to be a provocative stimulant for the thinking, discussion, and planning that must take place in every hospital and health system in order for those organizations to succeed in their mission of caring for patients and advancing the profession of pharmacy. Some may disagree with the opinions of the FPs or the positions taken by individual chapter authors with respect to their vision of the future. That is acceptable and desirable. Also, the report reflects a consensus of the national direction and may not reflect what is likely to occur in your geographic region or state. Reflect those differing opinions in your organization’s strategic planning process and chart a course for your organization that is consistent with your beliefs, and the Pharmacy Forecast will have met its objective of encouraging planning efforts of health systems. We welcome your comments on this new 2021 edition of the Pharmacy Forecast. Suggestions for future forecasts can be sent to any of the forecast editors through the Foundation’s Pharmacy Forecast website at http://www.ashpfoundation.org/pharmacyforecast and will be considered for future editions. Joseph T. DiPiro, PharmD, FCCP, FAAAS, Dean, School of Pharmacy, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA Address correspondence to Dr. DiPiro (jtdipiro@vcu.edu). An underlying assumption supporting the need for the Pharmacy Forecast is that many factors influencing our profession and pharmacy services are not directly under our control, yet we can take actions that enhance the likelihood of favorable outcomes within this environment. Those influencing factors may be as a specific state or national policy or regulation, or as nebulous as the trend toward globalization (or anti-globalization). Other than the COVID-19 pandemic, the influencing factors such as the prominence of “big data,” issues of personal privacy, financing and health access are not new and have emerged over time. Within that context, then, we have greatest control over the scope of our pharmacy enterprise and the workforce within that enterprise, and some control over those factors where we can advocate to the decision makers (such as health-system administrators, legislators, and government agency officials). The perspective gained from reading the 2021 Pharmacy Forecast is most effectively used within the process of strategic planning as part of environmental scanning or when identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, or threats (SWOT). In addition, the recommendations provided below can be part of the institution’s strategic planning action steps. The methods used to develop the 2021 Pharmacy Forecast were similar to those used in the previous editions, drawing on concepts described in James Surowiecki’s book The Wisdom of Crowds.1 According to Surowiecki, the collective opinions of “wise crowds”—groups of diverse individuals in which each participant’s input is provided independently, drawing from their own locally informed points of view—can be more informative than the opinion of any individual participant. This process is particularly valuable when addressing phenomena that are not well suited to quantitative predictive methods. A critical requirement for successfully creating crowd-based knowledge is establishing a systematic method of combining individual beliefs into a collective opinion—the Pharmacy Forecast uses a survey of carefully selected pharmacy leaders to derive our environmental scan. 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