Intersectoral collaboration has always been one of the most crucial yet overlooked aspects of public healthcare and medical practice as a whole, including both preventive care and response to emergency situations. However, over the past years, the notion of legal cooperation between various public institutions for the sake of national safety has become quite relevant in the context of healthcare. According to the researchers, as far as healthcare is concerned, some of the major responsibilities dealing with such issues as supply distribution and epidemic dissemination control have nothing to do with the medical practice itself, placing major emphasis on the governmental and private sectors (Damari, Rostamigooran, & Farshad, 2019).
Thus, one of the most beneficial ways to reach the desired pattern of professional communication is to secure legal collaboration between the sectors in terms of prompt responses to the emergency situation. A prime example of such a legal document is a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), standing for a formal agreement the establishes the patterns of further partnership for the stakeholders (ASTHO, 2018). In terms of the following paper, the peculiarities of MOU cooperation will be analyzed on both federal and state levels in order to define some of the fundamental features of such an agreement type.
To begin with, it is necessary to outline the primary purpose of the MOU agreement for both the health agencies and pharmacies in order to define whether the procedure itself has any benefit for the parties. Hence, one of the major benefits for healthcare institutions is the ability to secure a prompt response to emergency situations that requires a considerable supply of medications, e.g., rapid demand in vaccination during the pandemic outbreak (Balick, 2017). As far as pharmacies engaged are concerned, the MOU agreement provides them with measurable prospects on the scope of supply manufacturing and allocation of resources.
Hence, the relevance of the MOU could be examined from both perspectives, primarily benefiting the community, for the sake of which the cooperation is commenced in the first place. However, the model works only in cases when the requirements for the MPU from all the stakeholders and tangible and correlate with the real scope of the potential emergency (Fitzgerald et al., 2016). Otherwise, the cooperation will be regarded as inefficient and meaningless. For this reason, prior to developing an extensive collaboration plan, it is of paramount importance to dwell upon the overall capabilities of the pharmaceutical units willing to cooperate in order to create realistic goals for demand satisfaction in case of emergency.
In order to obtain a deeper understanding of the notion of MOU in the national context, it is necessary to outline an example of how the system works in real-life situations. The modern environment, which explicitly concerns the necessity of immediate pharmacy support, is centered around the outbreak of the global pandemic of the COVID-19 virus, causing a considerable demand for an immediate pharmacy intervention and medical supply required to address the emergency. Hence, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (2020) commenced a procedure of establishing a long-term partnership with various healthcare-related facilities in order to respond to the ongoing healthcare disaster. According to the terms introduced, the CDC is willing to cooperate with pharmacy institutions among the aforementioned facilities in terms of the supply of the vaccine in case one is invented and approved by the FDA. Moreover, the jurisdiction that controls the MOU agreement proclaims the CDC as a major distributor of the vaccine and medical supplies across the state once they are provided by the pharmacies (CDC, 2020). Hence, such an example of MOU ratification, by all means, obtains a nationwide significance regardless of the state peculiarities set out by local governments.
In general, the protocols for the MOU agreements across the US are designed to respond to all types of hazardous situations that might take place within the area (Schwerzmann et al., 2017). However, according to the well-known Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution, state authorities are entitled to have a high level of autonomy when it comes to the decision-making processes relevant to the community. Thus, some states, instead of following the nationwide recommendations in terms of defining the MOU requirements, develop strategies that seem to be working for the local residents. For example, the state of Virginia has defined four major healthcare hazards that presuppose the MOU agreement formed between the healthcare agencies and pharmacies, including:
- Pandemic influenza vaccine emergency response;
- Antiviral emergency response;
- Anthrax emergency response;
- Response to a natural disaster (ASTHO, 2018, p. 4).
Hence, taking everything into consideration, it might be concluded that the MOU agreement management within the US healthcare context has now become one of the most widespread yet challenging aspects of public health and emergency response. Thus, in order to realize the level of responsibility taken, it is of crucial importance to dwell upon the detailed planning of the requirements expected as a result of the cooperation. The future implications of the MOU agreement handling should concern the peculiarities of more health hazards across local authorities.
References
ASTHO. (2018). Memorandum of agreement between Virginia department of health and _ n Virginia for emergency medical countermeasures. Web.
ASTHO. (2018). Memorandum of understanding toolkit for public health agencies and pharmacies. Web.
Balick, R. (2017). Pharmacy–public health coordination keeps communities a step ahead of pandemic influenza. Pharmacy Today, 23(8), 46.
CDC. (2020). COVID-19 vaccination program interim playbook for jurisdiction operations. Web.
CDC. (2020). Different COVID-19 vaccines. Web.
Damari, B., Rostamigooran, N., & Farshad, A. A. (2019). Challenges of memorandum of understanding as a tool for strengthening intersectoral collaboration in health system. SDH, 5(3), 170-176.
Fitzgerald, T. J., Kang, Y., Bridges, C. B., Talbert, T., Vagi, S. J., Lamont, B., & Graitcer, S. B. (2016). Integrating pharmacies into public health program planning for pandemic influenza vaccine response. Vaccine, 34(46), 5643-5648.
Schwerzmann, J., Graitcer, S. B., Jester, B., Krahl, D., Jernigan, D., Bridges, C. B., & Miller, J. (2017). Evaluating the impact of pharmacies on pandemic influenza vaccine administration. Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, 11(5), 587-593.