Expert: Provider Status for Pharmacists ‘Could Be Possible in 2024’

Pharmacy Times interviewed Ken Perez, MBA, vice president of healthcare policy and government affairs at Omnicell, on recent developments toward provider status being introduced in legislation in Congress. Perez also highlights the progress, challenges, and potential outcomes related to the push for pharmacist provider status.

Pharmacy Times: What have been some of the developments regarding provider status for pharmacists that occurred in 2023?

Ken Perez, MBA: Pharmacist provider status has been a long standing cause or movement in the pharmacist profession. So, in 2023, there were 2 bills that were teed up, one in the House and then with an accompanying identical bill in the Senate, and then one in the Senate, and I'll talk about both of those. They are in response to the continued lobbying and advocacy work, but also just the realities of societal challenges which I’ll go into.

Back in March 2023, HR 1770 was introduced into the House and also Senate Bill 2477. And this provided for permanent coverage across the nation, for Medicare, reimbursement for pharmacists’ services for testing, vaccines, and treatment of COVID-19, influenza, RSV, and strep. So this approach was a narrow range of services across the entire nation. So broad geography, narrow range of services. So that's the that's kind of the first approach.

There's another approach which was introduced in in May, and that was Senate Bill 1491, and that was for Medicare payment for certain pharmacy services in what are called a health care provider shortage area [HPSA], and these are where there’s not enough primary care physicians. It was introduced in the Senate by Chuck Grassley from Iowa, and it had 12 co-sponsors—7 Democrats, 4 Republicans, and 1 independent—which is showing again, we have bipartisan support for this. So those are the 2 big developments.

The key thing is the fact that Tom Cotton, who is a very conservative senator out of Arkansas, and Raphael Warnock, one of the most liberal senators out of Georgia, a Democratic senator there, and they're co-sponsors of this. And I think this reflects a greater sense of bipartisanship and concern and interest in pharmacist provider status.

READ MORE