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A little more than one week following its reintroduction in the Senate, provider status legislation is again being entertained in the House...the Pharmacy and Medically Underserved Areas Enhancement Act (H.R.592)...will make it easier for Medicare patients in underserved communities to receive care...The...Act would allow Medicare beneficiaries to receive basic care such as immunizations, diabetes management, blood pressure screenings and routine checks from pharmacists. The bill reached impressive levels of bipartisan support… There is currently no avenue for Medicare to directly reimburse pharmacists for providing this care...The work already is underway to build on the momentum that was started in the last Congress, to accelerate the campaign to enhance the quality, accessibility and affordability of patient care through pharmacist-provided services...Pharmacists are highly-accessible, clinically-trained medication experts who can improve health outcomes and reduce overall costs…We hope the common-sense, bicameral, bipartisan legislation, which also generated a lot of support in the previous Congress, can pass both chambers and make it to President Trump’s desk for his signature...

Nine different pharmaceutical pictograms that could help older people understand written medical information...Simple images designed to convey information about prescription drugs could help save lives and reduce the economic burden of non-adherence to treatment. New research...shows that including pictograms on written medication instructions helps seniors take their drugs correctly...Patients with multiple prescriptions can easily get confused and take the wrong medication, leading to hospitalization and even death…pictograms on a prescription drug label does help older people understand medical information and instructions. The pictograms provided information such as "take with meals" or "do not leave in direct sunlight" and warnings such as "poison" and "do not leave near children."...This not only prevents accidental overdose, it relieves some of the pressure that our aging population is putting on the health service by avoiding preventable tragedies...

Walgreens has rolled out an online mental health platform that offers informational resources, screening tools, a therapist/psychiatrist locator, and live video chats with mental health professionals...The drug chain said...that in tandem with Mental Health America, it has launched Mental Health Answers...visitors can access MHA’s provider locator tool; free online screenings that enable users to assess symptoms for a range of conditions, such as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder and PTSD; and a library of articles and other content on mental health...MHA also can facilitate follow-up treatment and care through providers and specialists in local communities, as well as via its affiliates nationwide...The mental telehealth service expands Walgreens’ current medical telehealth partnership with MDLIVE...Teletherapy is an excellent option if you’re looking for a more convenient, private, and affordable way to receive behavioral therapy...Through our relationship with Walgreens, we are making it easier for consumers to get help by providing the flexibility to schedule therapy at a time that works best for them, and without the need for travel time, waiting rooms or office visits...

Pharmacists may do a better job than doctors helping chronically ill patients manage their blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar levels if they're allowed to direct people's health care, a new evidence review suggests...The review also found that pharmacists could manage chronic diseases with about the same efficiency as doctors...current evidence doesn't show whether pharmacists can actually improve a patient's overall health if they take over someone's care from a doctor...The reason for the interest in pharmacist-driven care is that some areas of the United States don't have enough doctors. Due to these shortages, other types of health care workers, such as nurse practitioners or physician assistants, are being called on to help fill the gaps...New legislation introduced in Congress would establish pharmacists as health care providers, and pay them accordingly through Medicare in communities where there aren't enough doctors...Pharmacists are paid less than physicians, and having them handle day-to-day chronic disease care would free up doctors to see patients with more serious and complex health problems...

The roll out of the pilot will see a further 1,500 pharmacists working in general practice by 2020-2021...NHS (National Health Service) England has announced an additional £112m ($137m) investment to roll out a pilot scheme embedding clinical pharmacists in GP surgeries...a commitment set out in the ‘General practice forward view’...The expansion...follows a “successful” pilot that involved 490 clinical pharmacists working in approximately 650 general practices across 90 sites...The goal of the scheme is to ease pressure on the NHS by increasing capacity in general practice, which will free up GP time as well as ensure safer prescribing by offering specialist advice and support for patients with chronic diseases…The success of the initial pilots has shown the benefits of having more clinical pharmacists in general practice, reducing GP workload and helping ensure patients are seen by the right professional in a more convenient and timely way...the scheme was welcomed by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, which says it is a “significant step” towards its shared vision with the RCGP ( Royal College of General Practitioners) that every GP practice should have access to the expertise of a pharmacist...

A recent Wall Street Journal op-ed assessing ways to reduce medical errors in the U.S. strongly recommends including pharmacists on care teams. "How to Make Hospitals Less Deadly" by James B. Lieber notes that pharmacists’ extensive knowledge of medications offers an important barrier to common medical errors... "Doctors have only glancing knowledge of how an ever-multiplying number of drugs interact with diet, age, disease, body type and each other," he writes, pointing to a study that showed placing pharmacists in patient areas decreased errors by 45% and cut errors leading to death or severe harm by 94%..."Studies have long demonstrated that pharmacists have much to offer in terms of ensuring appropriate prescribing and optimal medication therapy outcomes," said ASHP CEO Paul W. Abramowitz, Pharm.D.

In the more than thirty years I have practiced pharmacy, I have witnessed a tremendous evolution in the profession. The clinical foundation and training of a pharmacist graduating today is leaps and bounds above where I started my practice. However, one thing has not changed: a pharmacists’ role in patient care goes well beyond dispensing medications...Today, as before, many pharmacists provide patient-centered services...We are the front line of the health care team and often see patients more than any other provider. Pharmacists have become the most over-trained and under-utilized professionals in America...While doctors should remain the quarterbacks, pharmacists must be given "provider status" so the profession is able to be the integral part of the health care team we are trained to be...With provider status, pharmacists would be added to the list of Medicare providers which would not only allow for the best possible care for patients but would also ensure it is done in the most cost-effective manner...In my short time in Washington I have come to realize just how hard it can be to advance commonsense reform...a bipartisan majority of 272 members have cosponsored the Pharmacy and Medically Underserved Areas Enhancement Act introduced by Representative Brett Guthrie. This legislation simply gives pharmacists provider status...let’s move forward...to improve access to quality and affordable health care for all Americans.

Something astonishing has happened in the past year to outpatient treatment at the Veterans Affairs hospital here...Vets regularly get next-day and even same-day appointments for primary care now, no longer waiting a month or more to see a doctor as many once did...The reason is they don’t all see doctors. Clinical pharmacists — whose special training permits them to prescribe drugs, order lab tests, make referrals to specialists and do physical examinations — are handling more patients’ chronic care needs. That frees physicians to concentrate on new patients and others with complex needs...A quarter of primary care appointments at the Madison hospital are now handled by clinical pharmacists…It’s having a significant impact on reducing wait times and our office is trying to expand more of them nationally to increase access...VA hospital officials in both Madison and El Paso said they faced challenges initially in persuading doctors to delegate some duties to qualified pharmacists...Some physicians feel like it’s a turf war and don’t want to refer their patients because they feel the clinical pharmacist is trying to practice medicine...

With extra training, Health Education England says there is potential for independent prescriber pharmacists to help manage patients attending emergency departments...Pharmacists have the potential to manage the care of up to 36% of patients attending hospital emergency departments, according to the results of two studies by Health Education England...Based specifically on completion of a 12-month, level 7, postgraduate diploma advanced practice… training course, with modules in clinical examination skills and clinical health assessment and diagnostics, it is estimated that the achievable level of pharmacist management may be 27% of all cases...This study provides an evidence base for maximising advanced clinical training for ED pharmacists...Results show that the pharmacists had the greatest potential impact in the management of the general medicine cases (13.2%), followed by orthopaedics (9.7%), respiratory (1.8%), ear nose and throat (1.6%) and gastroenterology (1.3%)...For both the pharmacy profession and patients, it is important that this novel practice is grounded in what only pharmacists can offer – medicines expertise. Over the coming years, it will be interesting to see how pharmacists working in this enhanced clinical role deliver both pharmaceutical and medical care to emergency department patients...

A bill to have the nation's largest Medicaid program cover comprehensive medication management services by pharmacists and primary care physicians emerged from a committee hearing on April 5...In the past few years, we have added millions of Californians into Medi-Cal, making the effective management of the quality and cost of care an absolute necessity...CMM is a smart, important innovation to help meet these goals...CMM, according to California Assembly Bill 2084, is "the process of care that ensures each beneficiary's medications...are individually assessed to determine that each medication is appropriate for the beneficiary, effective for the medical condition, and safe given the comorbidities and other medications being taken, and [that] all medications are able to be taken by the patient as intended."...Absent from the bill, however, was any requirement for Medi-Cal to pay pharmacists for providing healthcare services or for Medi-Cal managed care plans to credential pharmacists as providers...pharmacists' strongest support comes from the rural areas of California, where access to healthcare is more difficult than in the urban centers of the state...