VOL. 1, ISSUE 1 | NOVEMBER 2023
OmniSYS Writes Congress, Asks Government to Utilize Pharmacies to Address Healthcare Disparities
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The Honorable Jodey Arrington, Chairman Committee on the Budget U.S. House of Representatives 204 Cannon House Office Building Washington, DC 20515 The Honorable Michael Burgess, Health Care Task Force Chair Committee on the Budget U.S. House of Representatives 204 Cannon House Office Building Washington, DC 20515
RE: House Budget Committee Health Care Task Force Request for Information
Dear Chairman Arrington and Representative Burgess, As a leading technology company providing medical billing, clinical workflow and documentation, and patient engagement solutions to more than half of our nation’s pharmacies, every day we see the immense value pharmacists can deliver as providers of accessible, affordable health care for millions of Americans. With nine in ten Americans living within five miles of a pharmacy , pharmacists play a vital front-line role in delivering prompt, essential services, especially to seniors and rural patients, to protect them from COVID-19 and other common infectious diseases. Where provider shortages are growing and care options are scarce, pharmacists can help bridge access gaps to deliver vaccines, treatment and other routine services. By conservative estimates, pharmacist interventions during the COVID-19 pandemic averted over 2 2 million deaths, over 17 million hospitalizations, and $900 billion in health care costs . Unfortunately, pharmacists continue to operate under a fragile framework of temporary authorities that were established during the COVID-19 pandemic. The end of the Public Health Emergency (PHE) for COVID-19 in May and uncertainty surrounding the future of the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act threaten patient access to pharmacist care for millions of seniors. Congress can preserve seniors’ access to the essential care and services pharmacists provide and strengthen our nation’s public health response by enacting H R 1770, the Equitable Community Access to Pharmacist Services Act . This bipartisan legislation would create Medicare Part B direct reimbursement mechanisms for pharmacist services to protect seniors from the threat of infectious diseases, specifically for COVID-19 and flu (testing, treatment, and vaccination), strep throat (testing and treatment), and RSV (testing). This legislation does not interfere with the states’ ability to govern pharmacists’ scope of practice – it simply assures Medicare beneficiaries’ access to services that pharmacists are authorized by states to perform. Supporting pharmacists as providers of basic frontline care is not only sound policy, but also what America’s seniors overwhelmingly want. An opinion poll of seniors conducted last year found that 80 percent “want local pharmacy access to vaccines, testing and treatments for flu, strep or future pandemic infections”; and an even greater number (85 percent) said that “they want Congress to ensure older Americans have access to a broader array of pharmacist services,” including testing and vaccination. On behalf of the tens of thousands of pharmacists we support in serving millions of America’s seniors, we respectfully urge the House Budget Committee’s Health Care Task Force to include the Equitable Community Access to Pharmacist Services Act as one of the key solutions Congress can advance to address health care access and affordability. We thank you for your consideration and commend the Task Force for its efforts to improve the United States’ healthcare system. Sincerely, David Pope PharmD, CDE Chief Pharmacy Officer XiFin, Inc.
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