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THE FUTURE OF PHARMACY

INTERNATIONAL PHARMACY JOURNAL

The 2012 International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) Centennial Congress will truly be historic as it plans to host the first-ever Global Symposium for Pharmacy Technicians and Pharmacy Support Workforce. This important summit could not be more timely. As healthcare evolves toward team-based care, pharmacist-provided medication manage- ment services hold promise to improve patient outcomes and lower overall costs. For the pharmacy profession to meaningfully participate in emerging models of care, how ever, it will require that pharmacists are enabled to practice at the top of their degrees, not the bottom of their licenses.1 Among other things, this will require a critical assessment of the roles and responsibilities of pharmacists and their support personnel, particularly pharmacy techni- cians. In many cases, laws and regulations steer pharmacist time to tasks that can be safely and accurately delegated to pharmacy technicians, siphoning off precious pharmacist time that could otherwise be allocated toward high-value clinical pharmacy services such as Medication Therapy Management (MTM).

Alex J. Adams, Samuel F. Stolpe

THE EVOLUTION TOWARD TEAM-BASED CARE STARTING WITH THE PHARMACY TEAM