— PRESIDENT’S PLATFORM —
LOUDEN OUR VOICE, VOLUNTEER A
few months ago, I resigned from my position with Walgreens, where I opened and managed its specialty pharmacy in Flint. I and the team there had grown the pharmacy from zero to over $100 million in revenue in just over three years. Though the next logical step for me may have been a district manager role, overseeing multiple stores didn’t pique my interest. It was time for me to explore what would be my next career move.
BY MICHAEL CROWE,
Pharm.D., MBA, CSP, FMPA, president, My Pharmacist Now; president, Michigan Pharmacists Association
In the interim, I had a lot of non-pharmacy friends and family members ask me what I was doing. I’m blessed with a wonderful wife and two daughters, so I suppose they were concerned for our financial well-being. When part of my answer included freelance work and exploring work-from-home positions, they all got a baffled look. I’d get questions like, “How can a pharmacist work from home?” and people incorrectly assumed “freelance” just meant temporarily working for someone else at their physical pharmacy. It was another reminder to me that our profession is often not well understood. This probably isn’t earth-shattering news to our members; however, the unique perspective I hope to provide here is how we, the members of the Michigan Pharmacists Association (MPA), have an opportunity to close these gaps.
Patient Expectations Let’s start with a pandemic and an epidemic. In the May issue of Drug Topics, a pharmacy owner describes the challenges he is seeing late in the COVID-19 pandemic, with uninsured patients expecting a free vaccine despite government funds being fully depleted.1 “Free,” he argues, is pharmacy’s new “dirty little F-word.” Indeed, the public often assumes all we do is put pills in a bottle and takes for granted any cognitive services provided. There’s also the landmark trial happening in Ohio, where two counties are suing Walgreens, Walmart and CVS for over $800 million in order to fund a five-year plan targeting the opioid epidemic.2 Although the cause of the opioid epidemic is multifaceted, I would definitely attribute a portion of it to the public’s expectation that so long as a valid order is provided, the pharmacy must dispense it. Imagine being part of the MPA Public Affairs Committee and helping the Association develop articles and stories for external publication, in order to tear down this misconception and the dangers related to it. Members of this committee could provide tools for pharmacists that could help them go way beyond “lick, stick, pour” and make more outcome-improving, valueadding interventions.
Threatened Providers What about physicians getting so worked up over recent announcements of pharmacy automation being adopted by one of the pharmacy chains? In this particular article, they’re concerned about the use of robots in the prescription filling process and
the impact on patient safety.3 They’re also incorrectly making assumptions like (1) the goal of robots is to free up time for diagnosing patients, and (2) that prescriptions filled via automation would be without a mechanism to verify product accuracy. This situation reminds us that under- and mis-informed non-pharmacy healthcare professionals will often be in the ear of legislators. Pharmacy professionals serving on the MPA Government Affairs Committee are needed to support MPA’s efforts to ensure healthcare legislation does not omit or misconstrue the valuable role of pharmacy.
Supportive and Supported Pharmacists There’s been a lot of talk about pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) lately, especially with House Bill 4348 being signed into law by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in February.4 Often, it seems all the negative practices of PBMs overshadow any good done by the pharmacists and technicians of PBMs in Michigan. We need to be a united profession, which means we need these professionals involved as members and engaged. Those serving on the MPA Marketing Committee or the MPA Membership Committee will have to consider these nuances as they develop their campaigns. Articles about imposter syndrome and implicit bias training remind me that we sometimes don’t fully understand ourselves.5,6 Fortunately, members of the MPA Education Committee and the MPA Workplace Environment Committee can help create training and resources to help pharmacy professionals better understand themselves and how they interact with others. Being that this understanding would be helpful early in one’s career, the MPA New Practitioners Committee would also serve a role here.
Important Opportunity Coming The suggestions above are just examples of how members with various interests, serving in various roles, could be united in addressing one thematic issue. This fall, MPA will be promoting a new volunteer form, giving members the opportunity to indicate their top areas of interest for 2023 appointments. If you have the bandwidth to join a volunteer group, please make it a priority to complete the brief form. It is a tremendous help to the MPA president and practice sections to have a pool of eager candidates from which to appoint. References available upon request 2022 July/Aug./Sept. | Vol. 60, Issue 3
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