Jessica Robinson, CPESN® Tennessee Managing Network Facilitator, grew tired of hearing stereotypes about community pharmacists being “less clinical” or “not real providers" when she decided to push back with a LinkedIn post that calls out the misperceptions of community practice. She is being heard loud and clear.
In this short video, the community pharmacist and assistant professor at East Tennessee State University's Bill Gatton College of Pharmacy, invites a closer look at a day in the life of the community pharmacist. ”This is the frontline of healthcare, and it demands brilliance, resilience, and heart.”
Thumbs up. Repost. Her post is a rallying cry that speaks for itself. “The stigma about community pharmacies is staggering and infuriating. We need the best and the brightest in what I lovingly call the ‘ER’ of pharmacy practice. On a given day as a community pharmacist, I handle some of the most difficult clinical and social situations you can imagine. A great community pharmacist has to have the problem-solving skills of MacGyver; the advocacy skills of a DC lobbyist; the communication skills of a seasoned therapist; and the endurance of an emergency room nurse. We are often the first point of contact for patients navigating complex medical systems, insurance nightmares, or even life-or-death situations.
"Community pharmacy is not ‘just counting pills. It’s being the one person a patient can trust when they feel unseen, unheard, or forgotten. It’s listening when others don’t have time, catching dangerous errors before harm occurs, and making sure that no matter someone’s background, they leave with both the medicine and the dignity they deserve.
"So when I hear the stereotypes about community pharmacists being ‘less clinical’ or ‘not real providers,’ I can’t help but push back. Because if you knew what a day in our shoes really looked like, you’d realize: this is the frontline of healthcare, and it demands brilliance, resilience, and heart.”
Those high-touch pharmacy services comes at a relatively inexpensive cost to the healthcare system. Troy Trygstad, CPESN USA Executive Director shared the following in a presentation to the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Math. “Of the entire ~$3.6 trillion spent on healthcare, community pharmacies cost the system 0.86 percent to operate based on the margin between what they bought medications for against what they sold them for plus a dispensing fee, or about $31 billion (IQVIA, 2018)."
What happens when pharmacies are paid for clinical services? "To transition pharmacies to a new sustainable model that provides the care that patients need, it would require a yearly opportunity for services billing of between $2 and $8 billion, comprising 6-25% of their operating margin," Trygstad said. "This represents only about 0.08 percent to 0.27 percent of national health care expenditure and would create enough scale for widespread adoption of a services-based community pharmacy model, preserving more than 50 thousand locations for patients to access frontline healthcare services. While the system spends a relatively large amount of money for the medications dispensed by pharmacies, the system spends very little on the optimal use of those medications and practice of pharmacy itself.”