ACCP staff, together with staff of other national pharmacist organizations, met with members of President Barack Obama’s Health Care Reform Team on Tuesday, May 5, to urge the inclusion of pharmacists’ clinical services in their framework for health care reform. The group presented joint principles, studies, and data on the role of pharmacists in patient care in all practice settings and emphasized the importance of supporting and expanding pharmacist services that improve patient care outcomes and decrease health care costs as a component of the Administration’s health care reform efforts.

Among the members of the reform team in the meeting was a physician whose own practice experience at one of the nation’s leading cancer institutes included the services of clinical pharmacists. He challenged the group to articulate how similar services, which he found valuable in his practice, could be most effectively delivered in a health care system increasingly characterized by ambulatory care services for patients with multiple chronic diseases.

Using the Pharmacy Principles for Health Care Reform, endorsed by a consortium of the national pharmacist organizations, the meeting focused on:

• Improving the quality and safety of medication use,
• Ensuring patient access to needed medications and pharmacy services, and
• Promoting pharmacy and health information technology interoperability.

In a follow-up communication, recently developed principles for incorporating pharmacists’ clinical services within the framework of the patient-centered primary care medical home were also shared with the White House team.

In a separate May 11 letter to newly confirmed Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, ACCP Executive Director Michael Maddux summarized the clinical and economic benefit of clinical pharmacists’ direct patient care services and the importance of including these services in health care reform proposals. Many observers regard Sebelius, the former governor of ACCP’s home state of Kansas, as a progressive and analytical policy-maker who is open to new approaches to health care delivery. ACCP staff will follow up with the Secretary’s office in the coming weeks to provide additional information on clinical pharmacists’ services as details of the Administration’s health care reform framework emerge.

On the congressional front, both the Senate Finance Committee and the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions are continuing their intense schedules of forums, hearings, and publication of draft documents on delivery system reform, coverage issues, and quality and safety. The Leadership for Medication Management coalition, coordinated by ACCP, continues to meet regularly with members of Congress and their health staff members to seek changes to the Medicare program. These changes would provide more comprehensive clinical services by pharmacists for beneficiaries who are either not eligible for MTM services under their Part D drug plan or who require a level or scope of services that exceeds what is currently available to them.

Finally, in response to the need for enhanced support for health professions education and training identified in the Senate Finance Committee’s outline for health care reform, ACCP sent a letter to Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) this week urging restoration of Medicare funding support for specialized (PGY-2) pharmacy residencies as a component of his health care reform framework. In the letter, ACCP Associate Executive Director Ed Webb referenced the Senator’s desire to promote greater collaboration among health care providers to achieve better care coordination. Describing the valuable and comprehensive interprofessional training experiences that are a hallmark of specialized residency training, ACCP also provided the committee with copies of the College’s position statement on residency training and previous correspondence with CMS on the residency funding issue.