Is community pharmacy a lost cause?


A month ago, NBC news published an article regarding the working conditions of community pharmacies. The issues highlighted in that article such as understaffing, unrealistic metrics, and high stress work environments just scratch the tip of the iceberg when it comes to challenges in community practice. With pharmacy chains such as CVS and Walgreens monopolizing the market, the emergence of Amazon pharmacy, and insurances pushing for patients to fill their medications via mail-order, the future of community pharmacy looks bleak. Community pharmacy gets a bad rap and with the unrealistic expectations set by pharmacy corporations, poor reimbursements due to unregulated PBMs, and issues with understaffing, the negatives greatly outweigh the positives. With attention turning to pharmacies at the forefront of the pandemic who are overwhelmed with administering COVID vaccines and tests, it is finally time to confront the harsh reality regarding the state of community pharmacies and to admit that current community practice is unsustainable. To be frank, in its current state, community pharmacy is dying.

Community pharmacies are barely holding up and many of the pharmacists and technicians staffing them are burnt out. The COVID pandemic has further placed a heavy burden to frontline community pharmacies but the additional workload just accentuates the many issues underlying community practice. And although it is easy to list off all the negatives about community pharmacy practice, its collapse would leave a large void in our health care system. Community pharmacists are the most accessible health care providers and they are able to regularly interact with and reach patients at a level that other areas of practice cannot. Yet currently pharmacy chains are drive by metrics rather than a focus on patient care which limits community pharmacists from being able to fulfill their full potential in caring for patients.

The problem seems to be that despite the evolving and expanding role of pharmacists in other areas of practice, community practice has been slow to progress unlike other areas of practice. MTMs provide a huge opportunity for medication reconciliations but workflow frequently hinders the quality of MTM services and current practice limits the ability of community pharmacists to make meaningful interventions. Furthermore, the implementation of point of care testing with collaborative agreements offers another opportunity for an expanded scope of practice, yet it has been slow to be integrated into community practice. The collaborative effort between Michigan Medicine and Meijer pharmacy in hypertension management further highlights the unexplored potential of community pharmacy. However, unless major reform occurs, community pharmacy seems destined to collapse.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Much Needed Reform

 I think our country is amongst a very pivotal time where conversations about race and ethnicity permeate every facet of our lives. I would like to assume that American health systems are created equal and that everyone who seeks care will be afforded the same treatment and passion they deserve for being human, however, as a Black man in America I know that is not true. As with most major American institutions, healthcare needs to undergo drastic reform before it can truly attest to equality for everyone. There is a very blatant lack of representation of Black health professionals in the United States and it is reflected in the mortality rates of Black Americans across multiple health statistics. The effects can be seen in the overwhelming rate of Blacks who died from COVID as compared to other races or even the alarming high mortality rate of Black mothers who die during pregnancy or while giving birth. According an analysis conducted by NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene...
Read more

Mental Health and Care in Mainland China: Apps filling the gap? By: Vince A Alessi

Image
Mental Health and Care in Mainland China: Apps filling the gap?  By: Vince Alessi,   April 14th 2021     Mental health has historically been a highly stigmatized topic in developing nations that have recently undergone rapid transitions from being labeled a '3rd world' to a '1st world nation'. There are several examples of this, albeit predominantly in sino-eurasian nations. Historically, China has been amongst the most outwardly intolerant of mental health illness as comparable to more demonstrable physical maladies. In 2011, a study performed by  Whittington and Higgins indicated that the majority of Chinese nurses in nationally supported hospitals exhibited minimal or "zero-tolerance" for multiple behaviors commonly associated with one or more mental illness. Even to do this day, overall the Chines population does not engage in mental health services or make visits to a care provider with any frequency, as shown in the figure.    ...
Read more

Johnson & Johnson Recall

  Within this past week, we have witnessed the rise and fall of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. What once seemed as an attractive, one-dose, easier-temperature-requirements option has been removed from the market due to a serious side effect seen in 6 patients. There is a lot of backlash on taking this vaccination away for such a small amount of people with this response. This serious side effect is a rare form of blood clot called cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST). A popular retort to this blood clot adverse effect is that many hormonal contraceptive products contain blood clot warnings. It is known that intake of estrogen-containing products can increase risk for deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolism (PE), which are both forms of blood clots in the legs or lungs, respectively. While both of these are very concerning, CVST is most like an ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke, but instead of the clot happening in an artery and blocking blood flow to the brain, t...
Read more