Pharmacy leaders appeal to Senate panel
ALEXANDRIA, Va. Seeking a strong role for community pharmacy in a reorganized healthcare system, the National Association of Chain Drug Stores and the National Community Pharmacists Association made a direct appeal to the powerful leaders of the Senate Finance Committee this week.
On Monday, the committee held its first roundtable on healthcare reform, “Reforming America’s healthcare delivery system.” Under discussion were approaches that could lead to a more cost-effective, responsive and sustainable healthcare system, including the concept of a “medical home” for each patient, overseen by a local health professional, such as a general practice physician, nurse practitioner or pharmacist responsible for overseeing a patient’s medical progress and coordinating his or her care within the health network.
Among other topics, Finance Committee members are mulling the role pharmacists can play in improving patients’ medication adherence and health outcomes.
In response, NACDS president and CEO Steven Anderson and Bruce Roberts, EVP and CEO of NCPA, sent a jointly-authored letter to the top Democrat and Republican on the committee, Sens. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Charles Grassley, R-Iowa. They pointed out the key role pharmacists already play in prevention and health and urged the lawmakers to include pharmacists in the medical home concept.
“As highly accessible health providers with the greatest expertise in medication therapy, community pharmacists are uniquely situated to coordinate a critical aspect of modern patient care – medication therapy. For this reason, NACDS and NCPA both advocate for an expanded role for pharmacists in a ‘medical home’ approach to healthcare reform,” Anderson and Roberts wrote.
Pointing out the high costs of non-adherence in both patients’ health and acute-care bills, the two pharmacy leaders urged Baucus and Grassley to include pharmacists in any discussion of health reform.
“With the goal of improving health outcomes and reducing costs, NACDS and NCPA have targeted improving medication adherence in their priorities for healthcare reform,” they noted. “We support expansions to Medicare Part D medication therapy management programs announced recently by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. We also support targeted medication reviews for Part D beneficiaries experiencing transitions in care, such a hospital discharge.”
In addition, wrote Anderson and Roberts, “We believe that community pharmacists, working in partnership with physicians and other health providers, can greatly improve patient adherence to medication therapy. This commonsense approach would reduce higher-cost medical interventions, such as emergency department visits and catastrophic care, and the preventable human costs that impact patients and those who care for them.”