The health care reform (HCR) bill signed this morning by President Obama includes provisions to ensure patient access to pharmacists’ medication therapy management (MTM) services, medications, and a viable pharmacy infrastructure. These critical services reduce the toll of inappropriate medication use, including nonadherence, and improve the quality of our nation’s health care system.
APhA strongly supported the bill’s inclusion of provisions to address our nation’s medication-use crisis. This is an opportunity for us to deliver as the medication experts on the health care team. We opened the door for the recognition of pharmacists’ services. Now we need to continue that work with regulators and our colleague organizations to ensure that patients have the tools that they need to use their medications safely and effectively.
The opportunity is there—grasp it!
Good job for Pharmacy if we can get recognized and PAID for our knowledge. The devil will be in the details. As one radio host said today now we will have to go through 25000 pages of regulations to try and make it work. As an observer and advisor to Ill Dept. Public Aid in the late 1960′s I first ran into the bureaucratic reluctance to pay Pharmacists for knowledge. True we have come a long way since then and I am no longer active in the profession I will not hold my beath to see that we get paid for the time and knowledge to make it work for our patients.
Tom Gulick RPh RETIRED
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