Washington Update

Launching the 2017 ACCP-PAC PRN Challenge

For the third consecutive year, ACCP is pleased to announce the launch of the ACCP-PAC PRN Challenge.

Consistent with the priorities set by ACCP’s strategic plan and the College’s organization-wide commitment to clinical practice transformation, ACCP’s Washington, D.C., office has focused for the past 4 years on an advocacy effort that calls on Congress to enact legislation to provide Medicare patients with coverage for comprehensive medication management (CMM) within the Part B medical benefit.

Now, we are specifically calling on PRN members to demonstrate their commitment to the College’s advocacy priorities through contributions to ACCP’s Political Action Committee (ACCP-PAC).

Click here to make a contribution today!

How the Challenge Works

The ACCP-PAC PRN Challenge will determine which PRN provides the greatest PAC support. PRN members who make a PAC contribution online will be given the option to designate a PRN to receive credit for their contribution.

• This year, the challenge will recognize two winners:

• The PRN whose members contribute the most money in total.
• The PRN with the highest percentage of members who contribute to the PAC.
• ACCP members who belong to several PRNs can make multiple contributions in the name of each PRN, but only one PRN can receive credit for any single contribution.
• Unlike contributions to the Frontiers Fund, ACCP-PAC cannot accept contributions directly from PRNs. All PAC contributions must be made by individuals from personal funds. Because of Federal Election Commission regulations, PAC contributions are NOT deductible as charitable donations for federal tax purposes and must be made from personal funds and/or post-tax dollars.
• To qualify for the Challenge, PRN members must contribute a minimum of $5. However, to increase the funds available for candidates this election season, we urge PRN members to contribute at least $25 to this effort.
• The winning PRN will be awarded coveted preferential timeslots for PRN business meetings at the next two ACCP Annual Meetings.
• Results will be announced at the ACCP Annual Meeting in October.
• Please contribute online at www.accpaction.com.

We encourage PRN leaders and members to take the time to highlight the Challenge in PRN meetings and online communications to PRN members. For more information, contact John McGlew ([email protected] or 202-621-1820).

 

Who Receives ACCP-PAC Support?

All decisions regarding financial contributions to candidates are made by the PAC Governing Council on the basis of certain established criteria:

• Position on key health care committees in Congress.
• Proven support for pharmacy and health care–related issues.
• Previous health care experience.

The key health care–related committees in the House of Representatives are the Appropriations, Ways & Means, and Energy & Commerce committees; in the Senate, the key committees are the Appropriations, Finance, and Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (H.E.L.P.) committees.

ACCP members who contribute to the PAC may recommend candidates to receive contributions. All PAC contributor recommendations will be considered; however, not all requests may be accommodated. The ACCP-PAC Governing Council must approve all candidate contributions.

As a federal committee, the ACCP-PAC can only contribute to candidates who are running for federal office (candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives or U.S. Senate, not state legislatures or gubernatorial races).

Thank you in advance for your support of this important initiative. For more information, visit the ACCP-PAC website at www.accpaction.com or contact John McGlew ([email protected]).

 

Advocacy Highlights at the 2017 ACCP Annual Meeting

PRN members attending the 2017 ACCP Annual Meeting who wish to learn more about ACCP’s advocacy work are encouraged to attend the following sessions:

ACCP Welcome and Keynote Address

Big Data for Team-Based, Patient-Centered Health Care: A Clinical Framework

8:00 a.m. – 9:30 a.m. (MST) at the Phoenix Convention Center North Building Street Level: North Ballrooms 120 B&C

Speaker

• Summerpal Kahlon, M.D., Director, Care Innovation, Oracle Health Sciences, Orlando, Florida

Learning Objectives

• Describe the emerging world of “big data” and how this relates to the advancement of clinical pharmacy practice.
• Identify ways to incorporate and use robust data sets/information to improve clinical and humanistic outcomes for patients.
• Summarize the current policy and advocacy issues that intersect with the world of “big data.”

Credentialing and Privileging: The Key to Advancing Clinical Practice Through Alternate Payment Models

Saturday, October 7, 2017, 9:45 a.m. – 11:45 a.m. (MST), Phoenix Convention Center North Building Street Level: Meeting Room 125

Available for 2.0 hours of CPE credit

Speakers

• John K. McGlew, M.A., Director of Governmental Affairs, American College of Clinical Pharmacy, Washington, D.C.
• Daniel S. Aistrope, Pharm.D., BCACP, Director, Clinical Practice Advancement, American College of Clinical Pharmacy, Lenexa, Kansas.
• Allyson Schlichte, Pharm.D., MBA, BCACP, Medication Therapy Management Operations Lead and Provider, Fairview Health Services, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Learning Objectives

• Describe the policy principles of ACCP’s Medicare Initiative to establish coverage for comprehensive medication management (CMM) services within the Medicare program.
• Identify the key challenges and opportunities in Congress and within the administrative agencies in establishing Medicare coverage for CMM.
• Describe the key goals of the MACRA legislation as they relate to value-based payment structures, and identify opportunities within this implementation process to advance clinical pharmacy practice and expand access to CMM services.
• Explain why credentialing and privileging are essential to the ongoing effort to fully integrate clinical pharmacists into health care teams under evolving alternative payment models.

ACCP Business Meeting and Town Hall

Sunday, October 8, 2017, 2:15 p.m. – 4:15 p.m. (MST), Phoenix Convention Center North Building Street Level: North Ballrooms 120 B&C

Building the Patient’s Pharmacist Team to Achieve Medication Optimization

Speakers

• Moderator: C. Edwin Webb, Pharm.D., MPH, Associate Executive Director, Director of Government and Professional Affairs, American College of Clinical Pharmacy, Washington, D.C.
• Allyson Schlichte, Pharm.D., MBA, BCACP, Medication Therapy Management Operations Lead and Provider, Fairview Health Services, Minneapolis, Minnesota
• Trista Pfeiffenberger, Pharm.D., Director of Quality and Operations, Community Pharmacy Enhanced Services Networks, Hillsborough, North Carolina
• Amina Abubakar, Pharm.D., Pharmacist/Owner, Rx Clinic Pharmacy, Charlotte, North Carolina

Late-Breaking Literature and Recent Developments in Clinical Pharmacy

Tuesday, October 10, 2017, 3:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. (MST), Phoenix Convention Center North Building Street Level: North Ballrooms 120 B&C

Available for 1.5 hours of CPE credit

Washington Leadership Changes to Health Care/Health Care Reform: Clinical Pharmacy Friend or Foe

Speaker

• Paul T. Kelly, Federal Group, Inc., Washington, D.C.

ACCP’s Medicare Initiative Update

Since the launch of our initiative to seek Medicare coverage for comprehensive medication management (CMM) services, our lobbying efforts have been successful in many respects.

During many Hill visits, we have had the opportunity to help educate key congressional offices on:

• The definition of CMM and the process of care.
• Its benefits to patients and the broader health care system.
• Its acceptance within existing public and private programs.
• Its potential for savings and quality improvement.
• How it differs from medication therapy management (MTM).
• The value clinical pharmacists add to team-based care.
• Many other attributes of CMM that were not previously understood in Congress.

We are confident that these efforts to enhance the understanding of CMM have helped place these services—as well as ACCP as its primary advocate—“on the map” on Capitol Hill.

Legislative Opportunities

Passage of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA) set in motion the process of transitioning Medicare physician payments from a fee-for-service structure to one that measures and pays for quality and outcomes by incentivizing participation in the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) and advanced alternative payment models (APMs).

MACRA is considered the most significant shift in Medicare policy since the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and demonstrates that Congress is willing and able to work in a bipartisan manner to enact wholesale reforms to the Medicare program.

Since 2015, Congress has introduced several bills to improve the quality of care delivered to Medicare beneficiaries, including:

• The Better Care, Lower Cost Act, which provides a framework for encouraging innovative chronic care delivery across the country and reforming the fee-for-service system to facilitate team-based care that helps patients achieve their clinical goals.
• The 21st Century Cures Act, which will boost funding for medical research, ease the development and approval of experimental treatments, and reform federal policy on mental health care; this act will fund the cancer “moon shoot” initiative and expand research into precision medicine.
• The Creating High-Quality Results and Outcomes Necessary to Improve Chronic (CHRONIC) Care Act of 2017, which expands opportunities for beneficiaries to participate in accountable care organizations (ACOs) and promotes the use of telehealth.

In addition, over the coming months, Congress will consider several important health-related issues, including:

• Reauthorization of the FDA’s Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA).
• Reauthorization of Medicare “extenders,” which provide additional funding for physicians practicing in rural or underserved areas, funding to facilitate ongoing National Quality Forum (NQF) quality measures, and funding for outreach and assistance to low-income populations.
• Reauthorization of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which provides low-cost health coverage to children in low-income families who do not qualify for Medicaid.
• The Prescription Drug Price Transparency Act, which would require greater pricing transparency from pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs).

Our conclusion is that despite the stifling effect of the debate over the ACA repeal-and-replace effort, there remain moderate legislators willing to work in a bipartisan manner to address a wide variety of important health care initiatives over the coming year.

Legislative Challenges

We have had little, if any, objection to the fact that CMM improves the quality of patient care by helping “get the medications right.” However, the most significant obstacle to advancing CMM as a Medicare Part B benefit relates to the potential cost of covering this service. Despite demonstrable evidence related to the positive impact CMM would have in reducing hospital inpatient admissions and additional physician services, the scoring methodology used by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) will conclude that adding CMM to Medicare Part B would cost—rather than save—billions of dollars.

In addition, adding a new benefit to Medicare historically is easiest to achieve in the context of a larger reform effort that enjoys widespread bipartisan support. For example, medical nutrition therapy by registered dietitians was included in the Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP Benefits Improvement and Protection Act of 2000 (Public Law 106-554), and the MTM pharmacy benefit was added as part of the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 (Public Law 108-173). Both laws had strong bipartisan support and were adopted over a decade ago. Given the highly toxic political environment on health care that has existed since the ACA was adopted in 2010, it seems unlikely that this level of bipartisan support could be garnered for passage of a major Medicare reform law anytime soon.

Conclusion

Over the past several years, we have succeeded in vastly improving the understanding and appreciation of CMM—and clinical pharmacists—through our efforts on Capitol Hill. We intend to continue to explore legislative and regulatory opportunities to advance this initiative, particularly within the context of evolving Medicare APMs that have been embraced by both Congress and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

Contact Us! For more information on any of ACCP’s advocacy efforts, please contact:

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