As Walgreens Boots Alliance chief executive Tim Wentworth works to engineer a financial turnaround of the iconic drugstore chain, he and his executive team are working with state and federal regulators to expand the role of the pharmacist to provide more healthcare services.
During the pandemic, pharmacists were critical at Walgreens, CVS Health, Walmart and other retail drugstore chains because regulations were eased in recent years to allow pharmacists to administer vaccinations to patients.
Some in the industry refer to this industry push as moving from “test to treat” given drugstore pharmacists have already become more involved in diagnostics given their key role during the pandemic as sellers of over-the-counter tests for COVID-19. There was even a push last year to allow pharmacists to give the oral COVID treatment Paxlovid once someone tested positive for the virus.
Now, Wentworth is among a growing number of pharmacy executives pushing policymakers to allow pharmacists to do even more such as prescribing for certain routine health conditions.
“We are on a mission to achieve provider status for our pharmacists given their influence, which was so clearly highlighted during the pandemic,” Wentworth told analysts during the company’s fiscal second quarter earnings call last week. “This would allow them to be reimbursed for providing select health care services to patients. These are highly trained, clinical professionals just five miles or less from most Americans whose scope of practice goes well beyond dispensing medications and includes immunization, patient counseling and point of care testing for infectious diseases.”
Walgreens, which owns more than 2,000 Boots pharmacies in the United Kingdom, has already seen first hand how an expanded role of pharmacists can help patients while expanding healthcare services offered by the company.
“As an example of what is ultimately possible, in the UK, the (National Health Service) pharmacy-first service which launched on January 31 expands the role of Boots pharmacists throughout England to advise and prescribe for the treatment of seven common health conditions,” Wentworth said. “This model serves as a use case of new ways to fully deploy pharmacist capabilities to lighten the burden on the broader health care system.”
Boots website says the United Kingdom’s “pharmacy first” effort allows pharmacists to provide “prompt advice and treatment including prescription medicines, where appropriate, for seven common conditions.” They are: sinusitis, sore throat, earache, infected insect bites and stings, impetigo, shingles and uncomplicated urinary tract infections (UTI) in women.
In the U.S., what healthcare professionals including pharmacists can and cannot do are often regulated by state scope of practice rules.
Thus, when it comes to pharmacists being able to “test and treat” it could take awhile to convince state regulators and policymakers. “That’s a state-by-state process that we’re going through until there’s a federal provider status,” Walgreens chief pharmacy officer Rick Gates told analysts.
Still, look for Walgreens and other pharmacies to expect opposition in states as they seek to expand scope of practice of pharmacists. The American Medical Association and state medical societies are long opposed to expansions of scope of practice, believing care should be led by physicians.
