You are invited to read my editorial in the October Pharmacy Today, due to arrive on your doorstep any day and available online. Since before I returned to APhA staff in February, I’ve been monitoring various groups’ interest in the creation of standards for community pharmacy practice. Some will call them best practices, while others will speak of accreditation of either pharmacies or pharmacists. I’ll share with you that at least three national organizations, none with a pharmacist membership, are interested in the creation of these standards.
The 2015 Vision for Pharmacy, put forth by the Joint Commission of Pharmacy Practitioners, “sees” pharmacists as autonomous and accountable for outcomes. To get there, I argue that we must take a leadership role as a profession and establish our own standards, rather than waiting for it to be done to us. In my editorial, I challenge you to think about that. Are you ready? By writing this editorial, I intended to stimulate discussion, and I invite you to comment here. While I editorialize a bit — that’s my job — I am really very interested in what you think.
Tom, this is a great editorial and does a fine job in ringing the opening bell at what is sure to be a long, hard-fought tussle over the future of MTM-2. However, I think it is all for naught if there is no mandate of reimbursement for these services at retail in some manner, where a majority of MTM opportunties take place. The responsibility of providing retail-based MTM services will fall on the practitioner following mandates from corporate offices at the same time that the number of patients receiving pharmaceutical services continmues to increase. Not to mention current trends in third party reimbursements continue. Maybe capitation is appropriate; the Iowa Medicaid capitation project, one of the many reimbursement projects I have practiced under in my career, may have been three decades ahead of its time.