Legislation That Can Transform Your Job
This is a letter that I will fax to my Senators and Congressman. This bill can only make it better for us, enhance our professional standing and help ensure that we continue to get a professional’s wage. I don’t think that you will get extra pay YET. But, you will. There is a sea change happening. Either get on the ship or be left behind. I am older and worn out compared to most of you, but I don’t want to go out as a “Glorified Tech”. I want to ride this horse as hard as I can until I can’t anymore. None of you have an excuse other than ignorance and incompetence. There are pharmacists (like some doctors or lawyers) who are just warm bodies with licenses. They are not reading this, however, so we won’t be hurting their feelings.
Feel Free To Use My Letter. Just edit it to customize it for our own style.
Senator Kay Hagan (NC) and Senator Al Franken have introduced legislation that improves the Medication Therapy Management (MTM) benefit in Medicare Part D by making more Seniors eligible. Like the House bill (HR 3108), the Senate bill will help insure that Seniors properly take medications. This can save billions of dollars.
The Senate Bill ensures that Seniors can receive MTM services from the pharmacy of their choice and creates a payment structure that assures that pharmacists are appropriately paid for providing MTM services.
I urge you to do everything in your power to see to it that this bill passes. The pharmacist represents a “bargain” compared to other health professionals. We are at the bottom of the funnel.
By education, the law and tradition, we are there to serve and to make a difference in the drug therapy of every single patient that receives prescription medication.
We could speculate that 90% of all office visits result in one or more prescriptions being dispensed. I know of a holistic doctor who plays the flute for his patients, but, in reality, drug therapy is medicine in the 21st Century. The pharmacist is alone with the patient at that point. The pharmacist is uniquely positioned to assure that positive outcomes are achieved. The pharmacist is the “finisher”. Passage of this legislation will benefit the patient and will also save billions of dollars.
Jim Plagakis
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Interesting post Jay Pee. I will have to find more informaiton on the bill and exactly how it is worded. Pharmacists need to promote these kinds of efforts. What politicians need to realize is that pharmacists can save the healthcare system a ton of money if they let us do MTM services. And we should be compensated for those efforts. I’m sure that the government is interested in saving healthcare dollars and some of the politicians might finally realize that better utilizing pharamcists is one way to save the entire system money. This will be and interesting story to follow and see what develops out of these particular bills. Thanks for bringing this information to me!
If this bill will actually fund MTM services by pharmacists, then everyone should get on board and notify their congressman. Whether chain pharmacists get any direct reimbursement is not important, the important point is pharmacists providing these services. It gets the pharmacist out from behind the counter and doing what the pharmacy schools have been promoting for years. Once the public sees the value in MTM they will get on board and then it will be hard for the politicians to kill these programs.
Every pharmacist should be behind this bill. However, we need to encourage a small yet significant change to the language of the text.
In Sec 3 the bill talks about the improvements to the previous legislation. At both Sec 3 (a) (2) (B) and Sec 3 (b) (1) (I) (iii) the word “pharmacy” needs to be changed to “pharmacist”.
That gives the power back to the individual pharmaCIST and keeps the corporations from collecting the reimbursements.
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Eric, I’ll send your comments on to Al Franken. Jay Pee