How Can Pharmacists Play a Greater Role in Addressing the Opioid Crisis?

In this video, Penny Shelton, PharmD, CGP, FASCP, Executive Director of the North Carolina Association of Pharmacists, offers suggestions as to how pharmacists can get more involved in preventing opioid abuse.

Transcript:

Penny Shelton, PharmD, CGP, FASCP: "I do think that one of the things we need to do is, in each of our states, we probably need to figure out who are the key stakeholders that we need to work with. In many cases, it's going to very from state to state, with regards to how different services can be carried out. One of the things at the federal level that I think we might want to work on as a profession is around medication assisted treatment and the waiver program so that pharmacists can play a greater role.

So, I think that's one area we could definitely improve upon, but even without the waiver, I think that there are a lot of different unique models of care that we can pilot, and we can actually demonstrate value. There's such a shortage of primary care providers, and primary care is actually being turned to now to help with the opioid epidemic, and they're really overwhelmed already with a lot of care, and so the idea is that we may be able to create new models of medication assisted treatment by partnering pharmacists with primary care and behavioral health services."