What does a pharmacist do? The answer to this question depends on who you ask, with patients, health care providers other pharmacists, PBMs and insurance companies offering a wide array of responses.
Maybe a better question to ask is this: “What is a pharmacist paid to do?” Based on reimbursement from Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs), pharmacists are only paid for the product they dispense, and then, only the most inexpensive generic medications. Many times, pharmacies are not even receiving a dispensing fee for their work, let alone a professional fee for services rendered.
In other words, over the past 20 years, pharmacy has evolved into what we call the “Stripped Down Model” of pharmacy practice. This model has become the de facto prototype for pharmacies in the United States. Unfortunately, a low-cost model is not synonymous with patient care and lower overall healthcare costs. Pharmacists concentrating only on dispensing the correct medication to the patient are doing little to improve patient outcomes and healthcare quality and, in fact, may easily be replaced by automation or less expensive providers.
This shift to a volume driven profession is not optimal for patients or the health care system, and all of us are all to blame for this. Pharmacists have precious extra time to perform patient care services in many practices for a variety of circumstances including pharmacy management emphasizing metrics of wait time and volume to their staff, patients wanting their medications to be cheap and fast, and PBMs and Insurance companies wanting to maximize profits and their bottom lines.
The Stripped Down Model doesn’t really use a pharmacist, and in truth as mentioned previously, pharmacists can potentially be replaced by robotics or technician based dispensing models, creating additional savings for the “system” thru mitigation of expensive pharmacist salaries.
…the profession of pharmacy needs to work to create a network of truly high performing pharmacies and pharmacists.
While I believe that the above scenario is possible, I see another direction for pharmacy. Despite the oppression of this stripped down model, pharmacists across the country still work to apply their clinical skills and make interventions on behalf of the patient. Pharmacists can and are impacting healthcare by decreasing costs and more importantly improving patient outcomes.
Even Medicare is starting to understand, with the new emphasis on quality indicators. Pharmacists and pharmacy performance are about much more than prescription volume. It is the patient outcomes that matter.
As the paradigm of pharmacy changes, the emerging model should leverage the pharmacist for what they can do. In other words, a model that pays pharmacists to care for patients through appropriate mediation management. Pharmacists should be financially recognized for ensuring that patients are using safe and effective medications in the most cost-effective way so that they achieve optimal therapeutic outcomes. In the coming days, weeks, months and years, the profession of pharmacy needs to work to create a network of truly high performing pharmacies and pharmacists. Pharmacists will need to work to become recognized for what they do and they will need to be paid to do it.
Pharmacists will need to “make every encounter count” with their patients!