Under a cloud of the government shutdown brought about by a dispute over funding for a proposed wall to protect America’s southern border, the 116th Congress welcomed the most racially diverse class in the history of the U.S. House of Representatives and the greatest number of women ever elected to Congress. Presiding over events, Nancy Pelosi reclaimed the position of Speaker of the House - the first woman in history to hold that office - as her fellow Democrats took control of the House of Representatives for the second time in eight years. The standoff held until January 25, when lawmakers finally reached an agreement with the White House to reopen the federal government, ending the unprecedented 35-day shutdown. After four years of bicameral Republican control of Congress, and with eyes already looking ahead to the hyper-politicized 2020 presidential election, it remains to be seen how Congress will function under a divided government structure.

Key Players for Clinical Pharmacy

In the new Congress, on the House side, the incoming Democratic majority meant a shakeup in the control over committees, including those with jurisdiction over health policy and the Medicare program. Energy and Commerce Chairman Frank Pallone (D-NJ) is well respected in Washington as a shrewd health care policy leader dating back to his work in navigating the passage of what became known as the Affordable Care Act. Congressman Richard Neal (D-MA) now chairs the powerful House Ways and Means Committee and brings with him a proven record of working in a bipartisan manner to advance incremental improvements to strengthen Medicare payment and care delivery structures. While the outlook for comprehensive Medicare reform seems uncertain in the current political climate, ACCP is encouraged by the willingness of the new House committee leadership to take a pragmatic approach to legislating.

On the Senate side, Iowa icon Chuck Grassley (R) took over the gavel for the Senate Finance Committee with jurisdiction over Medicare payment policy. Senator Grassley is widely known as a leading champion on Capitol Hill for the pharmacy profession at large. ACCP has an excellent long-standing working relationship with Senator Grassley’s office: Mary Abdelmalak, Pharm.D., spent a year as a health policy advisor through her role as an ACCP Congressional Health Policy Fellow.

Legislative Outlook

Despite (or perhaps in a calculated effort to deflect attention from) the government shutdown, Congress hit the ground running with a series of high-profile hearings into the contentious issue of prescription drug pricing and possible policy and oversight solutions to lower costs for American patients. ACCP’s Position Statement, Optimizing Specialty Drug Use, urges the integration of patient-centered, team-based, and evidence-driven comprehensive medication management (CMM) into emerging value-based pricing approaches to better ensure that the rational and economical use of specialty drugs is optimized both for patients and for the health care system.

ACCP’s Washington office also recently responded to a Senate HELP Committee request to expert stakeholders for ideas to address rising health care costs. Our statement calls for coverage of CMM as part of an improvement to health care delivery that helps assure medication optimization, enhances patient safety, promotes value-based rather than volume-based care to patients, and contributes to greater affordability and sustainability for the Medicare program.

Please contact us if you practice in Tennessee and have compelling case studies, best practices, or outcomes/savings data to share with HELP Committee Chairman Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN).

In light of the challenging political environment on Capitol Hill, ACCP is also focusing advocacy resources on efforts to advance clinical pharmacy and CMM through regulatory opportunities. This work has yielded some important developments in conversations with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Throughout this process, however, we remain engaged and active on Capitol Hill, where we continue our efforts to pursue the integration of CMM into evolving Medicare payment structures.

Grassroots Action Alert: Welcome Your Elected Officials to the 116th Congress!

As the new Congress gets under way, ACCP remains fully committed to our initiative to seek Medicare coverage for the direct patient care services of qualified clinical pharmacists practicing as fully integrated members of interprofessional patient-care teams.

But we need your help. As part of this comprehensive advocacy effort, members of Congress need to hear from clinical pharmacists helping to “get the medications right” on behalf of patients in their state or district.

Contacting the offices of your elected officials is simple. On our revamped Legislative Action Center we have prepared a letter for you to review and edit. Simply follow the instructions to send this message to Capitol Hill.

Please take the time to personalize the letter by providing additional information about your practice and the patients you care for, and remember to let ACCP know about any responses you receive from your elected officials.

Please also consider inviting your senators and representative to visit your practice setting so they can learn firsthand about the value clinical pharmacists bring to the health care delivery team. Thank you for your participation in this important advocacy effort! Click here to take action today!

ACCP-PAC Contributions Support Bipartisan Health Care Leaders in Congress

The 35-day federal government achieved little in the way of resolving policy differences between the White House and Democratic leaders. But the fallout is clearly being felt on Capitol Hill, where rank-and-file lawmakers who do not share the president’s bravado in the face of dismal approval ratings are scrambling to find common issues where both parties can work on a bipartisan agenda to begin to restore confidence in the process of government.

The 116th Congress got under way with a flurry of high-profile hearings on the issue of prescription drug costs, and key policy makers from both sides of the aisle have expressed their willingness to focus on other top health care priorities including efforts to address the opioid crisis.

As part of ACCP’s efforts to strategically advance the profession through these ongoing health policy debates, it is vital we provide support for our friends on Capitol Hill in order to ensure that these leaders remain in Washington and continue to advance policies that meaningfully address the health care issues our nation faces.

ACCP-PAC is the only means through which the College can provide financial support for candidates for Congress. With almost 18,000 members, ACCP is in a position to become one of the most prominent pharmacy PACs in Washington. To do this, we need the widespread support of our membership.

If each ACCP member contributes just $25, ACCP-PAC would raise more than $350,000. All ACCP members should consider making a donation of at least $25 to ACCP-PAC. CLICK HERE to support your PAC today!

ACCP and the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative: Advancing Medication Optimization Across the Care Continuum,/p>

ACCP’s commitment to team-based comprehensive medication management (CMM) is built on the foundational principle that clinical pharmacists, as health care providers responsible for high-quality patient care, will be accountable for medication optimization in the prevention and treatment of disease. This commitment was exemplified in the Board of Regents’ 2013 decision to launch a Medicare Initiative that focused on the “what” (coverage for CMM as part of broader Medicare fee-for-service payment reform) rather than the “who” (recognition for pharmacists as Medicare providers without specifying what they “provide.”)

This decision represented a shift in ACCP’s strategic outlook, learning from overly pharmacist-centric efforts in the early 2000s to achieve Medicare Part B provider status built around now-outdated fee-for-service payment structures. Importantly, it also recognized that any advocacy effort that seeks to advance a legislative agenda focused on team-based care must itself be collaborative in nature and secure the support of other health professions and stakeholders.

The Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative

Founded in 2006, the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative (PCPCC) is a not-for-profit multistakeholder organization dedicated to advancing an effective and efficient health system built on a strong foundation of primary care and the patient-centered medical home (PCMH). PCPCC supports increased investment in primary care through alternative payment models that enable PCMHs and other types of advanced primary care to provide integrated, higher-value care that connects to the community.

Aligned with ACCP’s core values that state our commitment to challenge the status quo and display the courage to lead, PCPCC was conceived as a driver of change: educating and advocating for ideas, concepts, policies, and programs that advance the goals of high-performing primary care as the foundation of our health care system.

PCPCC now represents more than 1,000 members from across the entire health spectrum, including other health care practitioner groups, patient advocacy organizations, health insurers, employers, and a diverse range of stakeholders promoting policies and sharing best practices that aim to achieve the “Quadruple Aim” of better care, better health, lower costs, and greater joy for clinicians and staff in delivery of care.

ACCP and PCPCC

Since the early days of PCPCC, ACCP has been a leader in this area and the College is proud to sit alongside organizations such as the American Academy of Family Physicians, American College of Physicians, The National Committee for Quality Assurance, and IBM as the only pharmacist practitioner group ever to serve on the PCPCC Executive Committee. Our strategic positioning within PCPCC served as the catalyst for the establishment of PCPCC’s Medication Management Task Force and the publication of the CMM Resource Guide, “Integrating Comprehensive Medication Management to Optimize Patient Outcomes.” Put simply, it is impossible to overstate the importance of this document to ACCP’s advocacy efforts and the impact of bringing together leaders from organizations including American College of Physicians, Geisinger Health Plan, Pfizer, Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, Department of Veterans Affairs, American Academy of Nurse Practitioners, and Kaiser Permanente to endorse a formal definition of CMM. ACCP’s leadership in this effort was also instrumental in helping develop future initiatives such as the Joint Commission of Pharmacy Practitioners’ Pharmacists’ Patient Care Process, which saw the pharmacy profession come together in a similar manner to endorse a team-based, patient-centered, consistent process of care.

Next Steps

More recently, ACCP collaborated with PCPCC to develop a popular and highly rated webinar, Optimizing Value and Patient Outcomes Through Comprehensive Medication Management. We continue to be active in a variety of PCPCC initiatives and consider PCPCC and its members to be a vital resource in our dissemination strategy for the findings of the CMM Effectiveness and Implementation Grant. Looking ahead, ACCP continues to envision future collaborative advocacy efforts with a variety of groups and organizations based on alliances formed through joint participation in PCPCC.

Now Accepting Applications - ACCP/ASHP/VCU Pharmacy Policy Fellow Program

Launched in 2006 under the guidance of Dr. Ed Webb, the Congressional Healthcare Policy Fellow Program is a collaborative effort of ACCP, the School of Pharmacy at the Medical College of Virginia/Virginia Commonwealth University, and the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists.

Pharmacists who participate in the program have the opportunity to gain real-world insight into health care policy analysis and development via immersion in the congressional environment. Fellows are actively mentored in legislative evaluation, policy development, research, and writing while integrating practical experience with theory. Our 2018-19 Fellow, Dr. Tina Chhabra, is currently working in the office of Ohio Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown.

The program provides a unique health care policy learning experience that is designed to demonstrate the value of pharmacy-government interaction, and to facilitate practical contributions to the effective use of scientific and pharmaceutical knowledge in government policy development. Fellows spend the first two months of the program with each of the professional organizations as members of their respective government and professional affairs staff. In September of the fellow year, they begin working in a legislative environment requiring health care input on the staff of an individual senator or representative or a relevant congressional committee.,/p>

The program is an enriching opportunity for the Fellow to develop legislative evaluation and policy development skills, improve research and writing skills, and integrate practical policy experience with theory. The Fellow will be expected to undertake a wide array of responsibilities including researching and preparing briefs on health care issues, assisting with policy decisions, drafting memoranda, planning, organizing, and carrying out program and management objectives.,/p>

Fellows typically seek congressional office placement with one of the committees that predominantly deal with health issues such as the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee and Senate Finance Committee or the House Ways and Means or Energy and Commerce Committees.

Applications for 2019-2020 Pharmacy Healthcare Policy Fellow Program

Contact Us! For more information on any of ACCP’s advocacy efforts, please contact the ACCP Government and Professional Affairs Team:

John K. McGlew
Director, Government Affairs
[email protected]
Katherine Pham, Pharm.D., BCPPS
Director, Policy and Professional Affairs
[email protected]
American College of Clinical Pharmacy
1455 Pennsylvania Ave. Northwest
Suite 400
Washington, DC 20004-1017
(202) 621-1820