PHARMACY PRACTICE
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WASHINGTON — Leading-edge baby boomers will confront a “woefully unprepared” healthcare workforce when they reach age 65 in 2011, triggering a potential crisis in health care, a new study asserts.
Today’s healthcare workforce is too small and is ill-prepared for the coming explosion in health and wellness needs from the nation’s 78 million baby boomers, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine. The report, “Retooling for an Aging America: Building the Health Care Workforce,” calls for bold initiatives starting immediately to train all healthcare providers in the basics of geriatric care.
The committee that authored the report also calls for a crash program to prepare family members and other informal caregivers, “who currently receive little or no training in how to tend to their aging loved ones,” accord-
ing to the institute.
“We face an impending crisis as the growing number of older patients, who are living longer with more complex health needs, increasingly outpaces the number of healthcare providers with the knowledge and skills to care for them capably,” said John Rowe, professor of health policy and management at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, who chairs the IOM committee.
“The sheer number of older patients in the coming years will require trying new models for delivering health care and the commitment of greater financial resources,” Rowe added. “If our aging family members and friends are to live as robustly as they can and in the best health possible, we must have a workforce of adequate size and competency to take care of them.”
CONTINUED ON PAGE 30
The “Retooling for an Aging America: Building the Health
Care Workforce” report calls for bold initiatives to train all
healthcare providers in the basics of geriatric care. John
Rowe, above left, said such training is necessary with the
impending growth in the number of elderly patients.
NACDS seeks congressional support
for e-prescribing, Medicaid solutions
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ALEXANDRIA, Va. — As Congress mulls legislation to promote health information technology, electronic prescribing and an overhaul of the Medicaid payment system, the National Association of Chain Drug Stores wants lawmakers to see Medicaid pharmacy reimbursements and e-prescribing as flip sides of the same coin.
In an April 22 letter to members of the U.S. House and Senate, NACDS urged policymakers to work for passage of two bills the chain pharmacy group deems “essential” to its efforts to ensure adequate pharmacy reimbursement, patient access to medications and the nationwide adoption of e-prescribing and paperless prescriptions. All those initiatives, NACDS contended in its two-page letter, are related.
To that end, NACDS president and chief executive officer Steve Anderson asked members of Congress to support
the Fair Medicaid Drug Payment Act (S. 1951/H.R. 3700) and the Medicare Electronic Medication and Safety Protection, also known as the E-MEDS Act (S. 2408/H.R. 4296).
“Congress has a tremendous opportunity to advance vital e-prescribing and to realize its potential,” Anderson wrote. “At the same time, Congress can save the budget dollars that are needed to reverse harmful Medicaid pharmacy reimbursement cuts that may force reduced pharmacy access, particularly in rural and urban areas.
“Though these bills are not often mentioned in the same breath,” Anderson added in his letter to Congress, “NACDS contends that the budget realities and healthcare needs of the day make them complementary pieces of legislation.”
Anderson noted that health information technology and e-prescribing hold “tremendous promise” for improving the healthcare system.
“In addition to saving money, the E-MEDS legislation would help to increase the prospects that patients take their medications as prescribed, which prevents more costly forms of care,” he told lawmakers.
Anderson called the Fair Medicaid Payment bill “the long-term solution to prevent devastating cuts in reimbursements to pharmacies for generic prescription drugs.” Those cuts, he added, “would put pharmacies in the unrealistic position of selling generic prescription drugs at less than their costs, something no business should be expected to do.
“According to one estimate, the cuts would force between 10,000 and 12,000 pharmacies out of business,” Anderson said.
In conclusion, added NACDS’ president, “the promise of e-prescribing and the need to fix a potentially devastating Medicaid reimbursement model are issues that go hand-in-hand.”
Drug Store News Pharmacy Practice (ISSN1524-5276) is published six times a year in February, April, June, August, October and December by Lebhar-Friedman Inc., 425 Park Ave., New York, N. Y. 10022. Paid individual subscriptions are available to pharmacists, retailers, wholesalers, manufacturers and others at the rate of $69.95 per year: $115 in Canada. Foreign subscription: Airmail only $185 per year. Periodicals postage paid at New York, N. Y., and at additional mailing offices. Copyright © 2008 by Lebhar-Friedman Inc. All rights reserved. POSTMASTER: Please send address changes to Subscription Dept., Drug Store News Pharmacy Practice, P.O. Box 31199, Tampa, FL 33633-0696. Canada Post: Publications Mail Agreement #40612608. Canada Returns to be sent to Bleuchip International, P.O. Box 25542, London, ON N6C 6B2.
No. 3
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