"Transform Your Practice to Focus on Patient Care", (c) Joe Sheffer, Pharmacy Today, 3/21/07

’We must demonstrate our value to our patients every day.’

In her inaugural address presented on Saturday evening, APhA incoming President Winnie A. Landis, BPharm, challenged Annual Meeting attendees to visualize a world without pharmacists. She said, “Would pharmacists be missed? Would patients’ medication care come to a screeching halt because of our absence?” Landis, of Lafayette, Ind., went on, “Have we done enough to show the value of the pharmacist in the patient care arena?”

Pharmacist as diabetes coach
Landis described her work as a community chain pharmacist providing diabetes care services. In addition, she discussed initiatives, such as the Asheville Project, that demonstrate how pharmacists can use medication therapy management (MTM) services to improve compliance and health outcomes for patients with diabetes while reducing medical expenses for their employer. She said, “The Asheville program shows that by improving quality, expanding services, and promoting our value, we will achieve the recognition we want.” Landis stressed that, to be valued by society, pharmacists need to demonstrate their value to individual patients. “The success and recognition we see today in pockets around the country did not occur overnight but were built through the long-term commitment and innovation of pharmacists committed to making a difference for their patients,” she said.

Expand the focus to more than pill dispensing
Landis admitted that it is easy to get caught up in the medication-dispensing role as a busy practicing pharmacist and concentrate mainly on getting the script correct and the reimbursement figured out. But, she said, “Merely dispensing the medication to the right patient is only a small part of the value equation we bring to patients … We must build on our patient–pharmacist relationship to improve medication use. We must begin to fight for, advocate for, and assume a more comprehensive role and move away from being dependent upon a commodity for our compensation.”

Landis asked her listeners to commit to six key activities:

APhA, with its new strategic plan, stands ready and committed to “facilitating the profession’s transformation to pharmacist-provided MTM services as the standard rather than the exception,” Landis emphasized. She explained that the Association will focus on creating demand for MTM services, educating decision makers and consumers about these services, and ensuring that pharmacists have the resources needed to deliver this kind of patient care.

Successfully shifting focus requires the efforts of more than one organization alone, however. Landis said, “Each of us here, as well as those back home, has an active role in this endeavor.… Each of us is an ambassador for the profession and must recognize our own value.”

New systems needed
The pharmacy profession, Landis stated, needs a system that provides pharmacists with the time to provide patient care and MTM services, tools to help conduct and document patient care encounters, support staff and technology to allow pharmacists to focus on patient care, and incentives to encourage pharmacists to focus on patient care activities.
Landis then asked the audience to imagine a world where pharmacists are essential and patients demand that pharmacists “coach” them on using their medications appropriately and are willing to pay for those services.

She said “APhA has opened the door to our tomorrow, but you have to walk through. Only together can we provide our patients with medication use specialists and medication coaches. It’s time to tell our story and walk the talk. APhA is doing its part to make this vision a reality. Are you ready to walk with us?”