NCPA proposes improved chronic care ideas to Senate panel

The National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA) recently proposed a variety of pro-patient and pro-pharmacist proposals to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee's Chronic Care Working Group.

The NCPA was encouraged by the committee’s willingness to improve team-based care. In the meeting, the NCPA proposed the idea to make pharmacists essential health care providers on chronic care teams. The idea is that the pharmacists can manage medicines in a safe and effective way while on these teams.

Along with recommending that pharmacists be placed on chronic care teams, the NCPA would like to see them added to teams in the home care model as well. It would also like to see the improvement of services dealing with care management for patients with multiple chronic illnesses. The Pharmacy and Medically Underserved Areas Enhancement Act would allow pharmacists to provide care in areas that are currently underserved.

Another area the NCPA would like to see improved is pre-diabetes education. Broadening the access to this information would allow more coverage of diabetes self-management training. The last issue brought up was the synchronization of medication. This would include the enhancement of the Medication Therapy Management in Part D.