The Best Time to Show the Impact of Pharmacists on Healthcare During COVID-19

Crystal Lennartz, VP, General Manager of Health Mart Atlas, spoke to Pharmacy Times about her session at McKesson ideaShare 2022, titled "Pharmacy Beyond the Pill: Clinical Payment Services and Reimbursement."

Crystal Lennartz: The pandemic, I think, is a catalyst towards provider status for pharmacists. There's never been a better time to show the impact that pharmacists have had. Unfortunately, most of what happened during the pandemic was a result of temporary ability for payment through public health emergency. It's really important that we capitalize on this time and the impact that pharmacists had to make some of this reform permanent. One example of that is the Equitable Access to Pharmacist Services Act. That's gaining some momentum to be able to have pharmacists in underserved communities continue to provide the types of care that they did during COVID, including vaccines and point-of-care testing.