In Closing
Thomas E. Menighan, BSPharm, MBA, ScD (Hon), FAPhA, outgoing EVP and CEO
This, my final editorial as CEO of APhA, has been developing in my head for months. Thoughts have swirled on sleepless nights and the hours in between. To support a smooth transition, my successor, Scott Knoer, PharmD, is being sworn in as CEO a month earlier than planned, on June 1. So, this is my “best and final offer,” or BAFO, a month early! By the time you read this, Dr. Knoer will have taken the reins.
Before opining on external things, let me first share my pride in the amazing APhA senior staff, who have been tireless and innovative as our organization has successfully pivoted to all things virtual. And a high-five to all staff for their resilience and tenacity in delivering value to our members. Finally, I thank all of our elected and volunteer leaders for showing up and saying “yes” to service!
I “graduate” as APhA’s CEO in an unprecedented time of upheaval and uncertainty in the world. If you’ve read my editorials of the past, you know how often we speak of disruption leading to important innovations IF we fearlessly embrace change and use it to our advantage. Usually these comments refer to advancements in treating chronic disease, evolving technology, and increasing team-based care and interprofessional collaboration. However, today, we must all pursue the innovation that can occur when we pharmacists unite to address this global health crisis together!
Today more than ever, this country needs us to open the gates for broad COVID-19 screening, assessing, testing, support for development of treatment protocols, treatment, referral, follow- up, and acute frontline care of actively ill patients. And this country needs to provide coverage for all who need our care in the process!
You should feel good about how united pharmacy organizations are today. We’ve been on weekly video calls to stay aligned in our advocacy for change. Together we’ve pursued answers and solutions with CDC, FDA, CMS, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Congress, and the Trump administration. Pharmacists have been the subject of more regulatory guidances in the last few weeks than in our entire history!
That’s no accident. We can be grateful for the collective leadership and cohesiveness of a dozen pharmacy organizations working together, and you can add another 51 members of the National Alliance of State Pharmacy Associations on top of that. In my BAFO, I extend a THANK YOU to my colleague CEOs, staff, and elected leaders for their willingness to collaborate these many years. We’re all better for it.
Yet, we’re not perfect, and more work can be done.
Americans need access and coverage TODAY for the array of tests available, and full access means testing and other care at pharmacies and provided by pharmacists where appropriate. TOMORROW, Americans will need access and coverage for the wide range of immunizations, including COVID-19. Options for access to those immunizations must include pharmacists and pharmacies.
While this type of disruption is not exactly what we pictured, it could be the precursor to permanent disruption on a massive scale. We have the attention of the regulators and legislators, and the lives of literally every person on Earth have been profoundly disrupted by this pandemic.
Can we stay united? Can we step up with innovative solutions that meet the public’s needs? We may be looking in the face of pharmacy’s ripest opportunity to demonstrate our value, perhaps of all time.
Pharmacists have the chance to help patients manage chronic disease, simplify and optimize medication regimens, deliver telepharmacy services, and continue providing the immunizations that forestall avoidable hospitalizations that our taxed health care system is less equipped to accommodate. These are things we’ve always done and always insisted to policymakers that we could do more of, if proper coverage for our services were in place.
Together, we’re making significant progress! To my colleague leaders, please continue to work together. To the pharmacists of America, of course you should support your national professional society, yet we must also support local, state, and national practice-specific organizations. All have a role to play. Keep showing up, keep saying yes, and be fearless about rejection!
Yes, the professional issues that constrain our ability to operate at our best remain. Challenges to well-being and risk of burnout have increased. In the face of dwindling reimbursement, there are concerns that some pharmacy staff’s physical and mental needs may need more support.
Yet now is the best time in our history for disruptive innovation. Our possibilities are exciting, but we cannot take advantage of them if we don’t stick together and take care of each other.
Spiritual unification must occur before corporate unification. State associations, student organizations, and national organizations must ACT like we care about each other. The unity we’re practicing now must continue long after the end of this pandemic. The sheer volume of updated guidances, added pharmacy recognition in existing policies, and more frequent and more open communication with federal agencies is proof of what can happen when we push for change as one. Our cause is righteous, our goals bound to elevate health care quality and access for a nation. We must own the magnitude of what can happen when we act as true allies and partners.
Even as we pursue our individual missions, we must recognize these missions are all elements of the “right” that when fully assembled look like a revolution in pharmacist-provided care—our time spent primarily as dispensers has evolved and will continue to evolve, now more rapidly. We’ll establish as the norm patients with well-managed chronic conditions, who are less frequently hospitalized and more often healthy and happy. Their medication will be used more judiciously and as a consequence more effectively; communities long underserved will be afforded access to health care in pharmacies, in physician offices, or remotely. Preventable illnesses will be tamed as we continue the path of innovations in technology harnessed and nurtured; and we will be a workforce fulfilled, with space to keep dreaming of more.
There’s only one way we will get there: TOGETHER!
C’mon, man! We can do this.