Meet Samantha M.
Philadelphia, PAHi, my name is Samantha Martin. I am first a mother, and second a retail pharmacist in Philadelphia, PA.
I think the retail pharmacy industry would really benefit by having additional pharmacists available at each location for the sole purpose of counseling patients.
Pharmacists are possibly the most under-utilized resource for patients in the current health care system. We can be accessible and available to patients 24 hours a day. Quality patient counseling can help prevent trips to the Emergency Room, hospitalization, treatment failure, and therapy non-compliance, amongst other things.
The only way to make this change happen is to solve the problem from the top down. There needs to be a legislative solution. I believe insurance companies must be forced to fully reimburse pharmacies for all their professional services, and retail companies must be forced to provide additional pharmacists in exchange for the reimbursement.
If a pharmacist is filling 400 scrips a day, calling doctors, waiting
on the phone to talk to insurance companies, and everything else -
because she is the only pharmacist on duty - she might not get a chance
to remind her patients to drink a full glass of water with their
Bactrim or eat a banana with their Lasix.
It's time to make patient counseling a top priority!
It's time to make patient counseling a top priority!
My name is Ray Funatsu and I've been a pharmacist since 1963. In '74 I started working as a manager with Sav-on until '94; that's when I stepped down because it got to be a little too much. I worked until 2000 and retired and now I'm on-call.
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