Thomas Menighan Presents at Annual Andrew G. DuMez Lecture

President of APhA Discusses the Pharmacist’s Role in Health Care Reform

By Becky Ceraul
November 5, 2009

Addressing a nearly capacity crowd of faculty, staff, and students at the School of Pharmacy’s annual Andrew G. DuMez lecture, Thomas Menighan, Pharmacist, MBA, FAPhA, executive vice president and chief executive officer of the American Pharmacists Association (APhA), reported that the health care reform news appears to be good for pharmacists.

Menighan said that for the average pharmacist, the health care reform debate on Capitol Hill is unfolding as a story full of great expectations and opportunities long overdue. “This reform debate is the best opportunity in a very long time for the U.S. medical system to better utilize the changing and expanding roles of pharmacists in order to help patients.”

The bottom line, Menighan said at the Oct. 12 lecture, is for pharmacists to be recognized as the health care providers that most have become in recent years, with multiple services offered beyond dispensing prescription medications. The current legislative bills presented as part of the reform packages do not cover reimbursement issues for new pharmacist services. But all the health care reform bills in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate currently contain language that helps pharmacists.

“There is language in every bill to expand the number of people who will have access to pharmaceuticals,” Menighan said. “And more important to the profession, the bills will advance opportunities for pharmacists’ Medication Therapy Management (MTM) services.” MTM services include life style coaching by pharmacists that has been proven to help patients better control chronic diseases such diabetes, depression, asthma, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Much of the credit for raising awareness of pharmacists in the health care reform process, said School of Pharmacy Dean Natalie D. Eddington, PhD, goes to Menighan. “After Tom founded and owned a Medicine Shoppe pharmacy for 20 years in Huntington, West Virginia, he became a partner in a multi-state specialty pharmacy that serves patients in much of the United States. As president and CEO of APhA, he now spends the majority of his time advocating for the association and for the profession.”

Menighan stressed that it is easier now than it ever has been to prove pharmacists’ worth because of the availability of data from projects such as the Diabetes Ten City Challenge, the Asheville project, and the School of Pharmacy’s P3 (Patients, Pharmacists, Partnerships) Program, which indicate the pharmacist’s effectiveness at improving patient outcomes while reducing health care costs.