Marvin Moore, PharmD

Marvin Moore, PharmD, is a community pharmacist in Two Rivers, Wis., and a Drug Topics board member. He can be reached at marvmoore4@hotmail.com.

Have you ever been asked to write an elevator speech?  In other words, what you would say if you had 30 seconds (about the time it takes for a ride in an elevator) to describe your business or to sell a project to a perfect stranger?

I’ve written an elevator speech a couple times as a brainstorming exercise when I’ve participated in strategic planning processes with organizations that I’ve been involved with. More recently, I did it as part of a marketing seminar that was meant to be specifically for my pharmacy.

It’s not easy to describe an organization’s mission or purpose, or in the more recent case, what makes my pharmacy unique, in about three or four sentences.

I live in a somewhat rural part of Wisconsin, so the idea of riding in an elevator with a stranger is somewhat foreign, due to the fact that (a) there is only one elevator in my town, and (b) everyone knows everyone, so the idea of somehow ending up in an elevator with a stranger just isn’t very likely. 

I like to think that instead of an elevator speech, I’m writing a “get to know the other parents at the ballgame a little better conversation.” At this point in my life, my kids’ ballgames are where most of my interactions with others are taking place. I use the word “conversation,” because it’s not likely anyone wants to listen to a prerehearsed 30-second speech anyway.

At the ballgame, when another parent inevitably asks me, “So, what do you do for a living?” I’ve found it helpful to be prepared with more than, “I’m a pharmacist.”

I’ve noticed that very few people have a good idea of what a pharmacist actually does. Maybe it’s because pharmacists do so many different things, or maybe it’s because every time there’s a pharmacy-related story on the news, the one and only video shot is of the counting tray and someone (by assumption, it must be the pharmacist) counting pills by fives and pushing them to the side.

So as part of the conversation (again not a speech), I like to point out the services we offer and say things like, “I spend time with patients who take a lot of medications and look for ways to simplify their regimen to make it easier for them” or, “Have you ever picked up an antibiotic for your child and wanted to know for sure it was the right dose? Well I make sure it is.” 

I’m proud of the many things we, as pharmacists, do every day. And it’s so important for people to know what we do and how it applies to their everyday life.

The cover story this month revolves around even more activities that pharmacists are doing these days, specifically as part of the primary healthcare team in primary care settings like medical clinics and physician’s offices. How great is that! Our profession is continually evolving, and we need to keep finding ways to use our knowledge and skill set to improve patient care.

I’d encourage you to think about how you spend your day and how you describe our profession to others. We need to make sure people outside our profession know how we spend our days so that, someday, the video of the pill-counting pharmacist looks as odd as someone using a pay phone or typewriter.

And just like someday, when we all have jet packs attached to the back of our white coats, the idea of using an elevator will be very odd too.  

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Maybe it’s because it was the first country music concert I attended or maybe because the concert was at Lambeau Field, home to my beloved Packers, either way, I’ve come to really enjoy the music of Kenny Chesney.

One of his more recent songs is titled “

.” It’s a great tune, even if country music isn’t your preferred genre. The reason I mention this is that I really feel that for those of us dealing with the pressures of owning a community pharmacy, everything 

If you are like me, you’ve seen margins shrink, and shrink, and shrink some more. This month’s cover story on DIR fees underscores this growing challenge. Trying to decipher 

, and dealing with other frustrations such as restricted networks, is no easy task. Now we’re again hearing rumblings of drug reimportation as a potential fix to the rising cost of medicine. These are threats to our livelihood and are reasons to be worried about the future.

But haven’t there always been reasons to worry? I’ve been a pharmacist for a little over 15 years now and I’m not sure I can recall any particular time that there wasn’t at least one threat to what we do. But I also cannot remember a time where our resilience and belief in what we do each and every day did not get us through the tough times or make us stronger. And so here we are, facing more and more pressure on our businesses, and yet there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

A network of like-minded pharmacies is forming under the 

Community Pharmacy Enhanced Services Network

. My understanding is that one of the end-goals of this network is to change the reimbursement model to one that pays pharmacies for the care we provide, independent of dispensing prescriptions. That’s huge for our profession.

We’ve probably all read hundreds of studies that show the impact pharmacists can have, in pretty much every segment of healthcare. It’s obvious to us that we do more than put pills in bottles, and now it’s up to us to make it obvious to others. Along these lines, those of us in community pharmacy are now being measured (and graded) on the quality we provide via the 

 (a performance information-management platform).

While I admit that it’s frustrating to see some payers use these measures to penalize the low performers instead of rewarding the high performers, it still seems like a step in the right direction. I know that seeing a monthly report card has motivated me to keep putting effort and resources into improving my pharmacy’s scores-and I assume I’m not alone in the type-A pursuit for perfection. 

And so here we are, doing what we’ve always done, going that extra mile to help our patients in every way that we can. And even though we may be facing more challenges today than ever before, I believe that what we do matters. We will get through this together and we will be stronger for it. At the end of the day, everything is gonna be alright.

There is plenty for community pharmacists to worry about, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Author | Marvin Moore, PharmD

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