In Maryland, the innovative P3 Program, launched by the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, has also shown a reduction in health care costs and improvements in specific health care clinical endpoints while reaching populations with long histories of lack of access to health care. Pharmacists have proved that their expertise in drug therapy and their active engagement in chronic disease management programs improve health and reduce costs.
Recently, thought leaders from the pharmacy profession representing academia, industry, community pharmacies and professional organizations gathered at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy for a round-table discussion on pharmacists' potential role in the federal government's health care reform plans. The group was greatly disappointed that the White House had neglected to invite a representative of the pharmacy profession to sit at the health care reform table. There was a clear and strong consensus in the group that pharmacists must play a key role in that reform.
Based in community pharmacies on nearly every street corner in the country, and in hospitals, clinics and long-term care settings, pharmacists have clearly demonstrated their impact on improving health and reducing costs.
The federal government is now in the process of defining the details of health care reform, and from the pharmacy perspective, successful reform must include insurance reimbursement for pharmacist services beyond dispensing, including chronic disease management, medication therapy management programs and the administration of lifesaving immunizations.
A successful health care reform package must also include community-based programs delivered by pharmacists that have proven track records, programs that have amassed evidenced-based data on pharmacy services' impact on those goals of improving health care and reducing costs.
Pharmacists must be included as reimbursable providers under any health care reform, and patients should have access to these services without restrictions.
Natalie D. Eddington, dean of the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, is a member of the American Pharmacists Association, the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy, the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists and the National Community Pharmacists Association. Her e-mail is neddingt@rx.umaryland.edu.
