From the Desk of the CEO

It’s not that issues in pharmacy haven’t progressed—they have: APhA met with the Federal Trade Commission on vertical mergers; states continue their journeys toward provider status; advocacy against DIR fees continues; and as far as we know at the time of writing, oral arguments for the PBM case at the Supreme Court, Rutledge v Pharmaceutical Care Management Association, will be heard soon in a case that could change the way PBMs do business.

If you ask me what keeps me up at night, I’d say it’s the kinds of mistakes Ellen Gabler described in her January 31 New York Times article, “How Chaos at Chain Pharmacies Is Putting Patients at Risk.”

I hear a lot of distress among pharmacists across the country, but I also hear pharmacists who are providing new services or growing their involvement into caregiving spaces. Are we about to flourish, or are we a profession in peril?

It’s 2020, a year once only represented as a distant future in sci-fi movies. Although we’ve now arrived, in some ways we’re facing realities as strange as any fictional account could portray. We’re a deeply divided nation.