John K. McGlew
Director of Government Affairs

ACCP’s Government and Professional Affairs team has been fully engaged and active throughout 2018 in Washington, D.C., and across the country, advancing the integration of clinical pharmacists into team-based, patient-centered practice structures. Here are some highlights from the past 12 months.

• Kathy Pham, Pharm.D., BCPPS, Joins ACCP as Director, Policy and Professional Affairs: In January 2018, Kathy Pham, Pharm.D., BCPPS, joined the ACCP Washington, D.C., office as director of Policy and Professional Affairs. A pediatric pharmacist by training, Pham served as the NICU clinical specialist and pharmacy residency program director at Children’s National Medical Center for 8 years. She now leads ACCP’s engagement, collaboration, and communication with medical, pharmacy, other health professional societies, health quality organizations, and payers/purchasers to promote and help achieve medication optimization for individual patients and populations.
• HHS Secretary Alex Azar Responds to ACCP’s Medication Management Questions: As the U.S. Senate considered the nomination of Alex Azar, a former drug industry executive, to serve as the secretary of the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), Senator Tom Carper (D-DE) introduced questions on behalf of ACCP to Azar related to his positions on policy approaches to improving medication use among Medicare beneficiaries. In his responses, Azar stated his commitment to using the power of Medicare to drive transformation of the U.S. health care system from a procedure-based system that pays for sickness to a value-based system that pays for quality and outcomes and highlighted the importance of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) in these efforts. Azar also stated that his priorities would include working to make health care more affordable, altering Medicare to reward providers for promoting good health, and tackling the opioid epidemic.
• ACCP Launches New Patient-Centered Team-Based Practice Forum: In conjunction with the ACCP Updates in Therapeutics® 2018 meeting in Jacksonville, Florida, ACCP launched a new 3-day Patient-Centered Team-Based Practice Forum, including a series of interactive programs to help practitioners develop and/or enhance their clinical pharmacy services to deliver comprehensive medication management (CMM). The Forum also featured a keynote from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and provided access to some important first learnings from the CMM Effectiveness and Implementation Grant study. This one-of-a-kind learning event will be offered again as part of ACCP Updates in Therapeutics® 2019, April 27–28, 2019, in St. Louis, Missouri. Click here to register today!
• ACCP Submits Comments to Senate Finance Committee on How to Improve Medicare and Medicaid Responses to the Opioid Epidemic: Congressional leaders from the Senate Finance Committee issued a request for feedback from health care stakeholders across the country on how to improve responses to the opioid epidemic. ACCP submitted comments calling on Congress to include reforms to the Medicare program that will cover the comprehensive medication management (CMM) services provided by qualified clinical pharmacists as members of the patient’s health care team. Click here to read ACCP’s comments in full.
• DC-CCP Celebrates Fifth Annual Capitol Hill Advocacy Day: On April 12, 2018, a group of over 30 ACCP members, including a large contingent of student pharmacists from Bernard J. Dunn School of Pharmacy – Shenandoah University, joined with ACCP’s Washington, D.C., staff for the Fifth Annual DC-CCP Capitol Hill Advocacy Day. ACCP thanks the leadership of the DC chapter for their hard work and commitment to ACCP’s advocacy agenda. Any ACCP chapter or individual member interested in visiting Washington to lobby on Capitol Hill should contact the Washington office, where ACCP staff will help facilitate and support their advocacy efforts.
• Webb Retires, Leaving a Lasting Legacy at ACCP: As part of its July meeting in Washington, D.C., the ACCP Board of Regents, together with close pharmacy friends and family, celebrated the distinguished career of C. Edwin Webb, Pharm.D., MPH, longtime director of Government and Professional Affairs and ACCP associate executive director. Webb will continue to serve the College’s Board of Regents and executive staff as a consultant. Webb joined ACCP in April 2000 as its inaugural director of Government and Professional Affairs and shortly thereafter established a new College office in Washington, D.C. Click here to read more about his career-long leadership on behalf of the profession and the newly established ACCP C. Edwin Webb Professional Advocacy Award, which will issue its first call for nominations in 2018–2019.
• ACCP Welcomes 2018–2019 Congressional Healthcare Policy Fellow: Also in July, ACCP welcomed Tina Chhabra to its Washington office to begin the 2018–2019 ACCP/ASHP/VCU Congressional Healthcare Policy Fellow Program. After an orientation period with the sponsoring organizations, Chhabra joined the office of Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH). Previously, the 2017–2018 fellow, Nellie Jafari, spent 12 months working in the office of Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT). Interested candidates should visit the Pharmacy Healthcare Policy Fellow program’s website for more information and instruction on submitting an application.
• Congratulations to the 2018 ACCP-PAC PRN Challenge Winners! For the fourth consecutive year, in conjunction with the ACCP Annual Meeting/Global Conference on Clinical Pharmacy, ACCP-PAC organized the PRN Challenge to determine which PRNs can generate the greatest PAC support. The 2018 Challenge recognized two winners:
  • Perioperative Care: Percentage of Members Who Contributed
  • Pain and Palliative Care: Total Dollars Raised

The winning PRNs will be awarded a coveted preferential timeslot for their PRN business meetings at the 40th ACCP Annual Meeting in New York, New York, October 26–29, 2019. ACCP-PAC would like to thank all ACCP members who participated in this year’s Challenge and contributed to ACCP-PAC.

For more information on any of ACCP’s advocacy efforts, please contact John McGlew at [email protected].