National Pharmacist Day: Recognizing Pharmacists’ Dynamic Clinical Expertise

Despite debates on which providers are best suited to treat specific patient populations, long gone are the days of patients seeking out one specific professional for their care or health advice. Of the many providers that have emerged as key patient touchpoints, community pharmacists are best-positioned to provide community-level care as the health care landscape continues to transform.

“It feels to some as what they call scope creep, meaning we're infringing on someone else's profession by doing or having provider status,” Meagan Brown, PharmD, BCACP, clinical associate professor and director of the IMPACT Center for Pharmacy Transformation at the University of Mississippi School of Pharmacy, told Drug Topics. “But in reality, it’s just confirming that the work that we're doing right now deserves the monetary value for what we are providing.”

To help the Drug Topics audience celebrate National Pharmacist Day, Brown joined us in part 2 of our interview series to discuss the community pharmacist’s emergence as premier health care professionals. From real-world evidence of pharmacists’ access to the inescapable rise of their clinical expertise, Brown filled us in from her perspective on the pharmacist’s expansion of scope.

READ MORE: National Pharmacist Day: Pharmacist, Educator Details Evolution of Scope of Practice

Drug Topics: For those outside the profession, can you explain what provider status actually entails and why it is the missing piece in fully utilizing a pharmacist's clinical expertise?

Meagan Brown: I think one of the biggest misconceptions about what provider status is, is that pharmacists are not equipped or are not doing these things. It feels to some as what they call scope creep, meaning we're infringing on someone else's profession by doing or having provider status. But in reality, it’s just confirming that the work that we're doing right now deserves the monetary value for what we are providing. For provider status to be implemented, that would allow us as professionals to be able to bill and be paid for the services that we already are providing.

I think that's the major point that gets misconstrued. In my experience talking to and working with other providers, they love the work that pharmacists are able to do, especially when they get the chance to see what all we can assist providers with. That can include, depending on your scope of practice or what you agree on, a document called a collaborative practice agreement (CPA), which would just allow you to work under a physician. Here in Mississippi, we can work under physicians under collaborative practice. And as long as the provider and the pharmacist agree on what's in it, then you can do whatever is in that signed agreement.

In mine, for example, I can initiate, modify, and discontinue medications as it relates to diabetes, hypertension, other cardiometabolic diseases, basically. I can do that under authorization of the provider. With provider status, that would allow us to not only be able to do that, but then, bill appropriately for those services. When I first started out, those services were being paid for by grant funding.

Drug Topics: Why might a patient be better off making their clinical or community pharmacy a primary care destination as opposed to the physician’s office?

Meagan Brown: I have seen the evolution of community pharmacies really becoming a central health care hub, if you will. Especially in rural communities—which is largely a focus as far as funding is concerned today, I know you've seen things in the news about rural health and transforming rural health—this is a really great time for community pharmacies as they have been for a long time in communities to be the central hub of care.

I think that that is helpful because most patients, most Americans live within 5 miles of a pharmacy. That's a statistic that's out there nationally. I feel that with the access that pharmacists have to communities, that allows us to be able to take care of patients at a level that other providers cannot. That simply has to do with proximity. [I’m] not saying we're just so much better at it, but just that there is a proximity that we have to patients that other providers don't.

Additionally, patients usually come to the pharmacy, I believe between 8 and 12 times a year. The number of touches that we have offers an additional opportunity for us to not only dispense their medications, but to also talk to them about the status of their health conditions. Pharmacists are trained to be able to not only talk to them about it but help them as far as making recommendations and adjustments to their care on a more frequent basis than other providers.

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