Blood, sweat, and tears: Wasted by medicare's missed opportunity

Abstract

The report by Drs. Bond and Raehl1 is yet another of the more than 100 articles published over the past 30 years that demonstrates that clinical pharmacy services can improve health care, save billions of dollars in health care expenses, and significantly reduce morbidity and mortality. Our society invests heavily in the education and training of clinical pharmacists, but society is prevented from benefiting from this investment because Medicare (and other payers) will not reimburse for these services. There can be no justification for allowing such waste and harm to continue in the U.S. health care system. Congress, Medicare, the pharmacy profession, and other groups dedicated to improving health care should take action immediately to correct this immense problem by passing the simple legislation that is required in order to add clinically trained pharmacists to the list of Medicare providers.