Providing care to prevent and address COVID-19 has been especially challenging in rural areas, yet health centers have persevered and proactively tried new approaches to serve their communities throughout the pandemic. Penobscot Community Health Center (PCHC) in central Maine, for instance, “kept looking for different avenues” to meet patient needs, as Frank McGrady, PharmD, BCPS, shared, including meeting with patients outside in clinic parking lots and working with local hospitals to provide monoclonal antibody treatment.
Curbside care at PCHC has proven to be an effective method for meeting patient needs while preventing possible COVID-19 exposure. Patients who suspect they have COVID-19 can remain in their cars while PCHC staff go outside and speak to them through their windows. PCHC pharmacists have even provided prescriptions and oral medications on the spot for patients who test positive and qualify for treatment. PCHC is participating in the HRSA Health Center COVID-19 Therapeutics Program and has already ordered 1,000 courses of oral antiviral pills as of July 2.
PCHC has also partnered with both of their local hospitals to connect patients with monoclonal antibody care. “We found a way to have a referral process so that when the monoclonal antibodies were available, we could get patients [to the hospitals], and we got them in fast,” Dr. McGrady said. He shared that PCHC pharmacists, residents, and other staff assisted in person at one of the hospitals, and added, “It was a great coordination of process and it was really wonderful to see how that kind of thing can come together.”