letter to a legislator

Advocacy Letter

Elise Lee, Rose Sebastian, Krinita Mehta, Crystelle Achafack

PHRD 315-6001: Leadership and Pharmacy Practice

November 18, 2019

Dear Delegate Pendergrass,

We are a group of P1 students and our main goal of writing this letter is to provide education about the services pharmacists provide and their importance in the healthcare team for bettering patient outcomes. Comment by Culhane, Nicole: Excellent opening statement. Simple but to the point.

Firstly, pharmacists provide expertise and extensive knowledge about medications that they can use to counsel patients and educate others on the healthcare team. One of our members is currently working in a pharmacy and she noted one experience where a physician had prescribed two of the same classes of medications to a patient. Had the patient taken those two medications together, it could have had deadly effects, but her pharmacist was able to notice the mistake and correct it before the patient was given either medication. Comment by Culhane, Nicole: Very moving story…..I like the story…draws the reader in.

While we hope that experience was a one-time mistake, it’s not. In fact, the World Health Organization states that medication errors cause at least one death every day and injure 1.3 million people yearly in the US alone[footnoteRef:1]. Approximately 50% of errors occur mostly in the prescribing stage with prescribers writing for a wrong medication, wrong dose, wrong route, or wrong frequency[footnoteRef:2]. However, nurses and pharmacists are able to catch the prescriber’s mistakes 30-70% of the time, which shows how preventable these mistakes are2. Furthermore, medication errors cost consumers $3.5 billion annually in the US alone and $42 billion globally1. While these costs will most likely remain high, there is an opportunity to decrease the cost by utilizing the pharmacist’s role to its full scope. Comment by Culhane, Nicole: Great transition statement Comment by Culhane, Nicole: Another great lead in sentence to the next paragraph [1: The third WHO Global Patient Safety Challenge: Medication Without Harm. (2019, September 10). Retrieved November 18, 2019, from https://www.who.int/patientsafety/medication-safety/en/.] [2: Tariq, R. A. (2019, April 28). Medication Errors. Retrieved November 18, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK519065/.]

Pharmacists play an integral role in public health. In today’s world, pharmacists are the most accessible healthcare professionals to the general public. In fact, 90% of the public lives within two miles of a pharmacy[footnoteRef:3] as compared to only 58% of the public that live less than 5 miles away from a hospital[footnoteRef:4]. The presence of pharmacists is integral to the health of the community. A study conducted by Tran and his colleagues found that 488 of 889 patients that were counseled by a pharmacist following hospital discharge had a readmission rate of 11.3%, which is lower than the group that was not counseled at 15%[footnoteRef:5]. Also, any patient can speak with a pharmacist regardless of their socioeconomic status by walking into a community pharmacy or picking up the phone with no cost to them. Pharmacists are trained to give medication counseling, immunizations, medication review, adherence programs, and more recently, pharmacists have been able to prescribe birth control. Beyond these medication-based services, pharmacists can also measure for diabetic shoes, compression stockings, and compound for medications that are not commercially available. This highlights the potential pharmacists have in improving patient health outcomes. Comment by Culhane, Nicole: You need to make sure your stats are current. This is old data and in fact 90% of people live within 5 miles of a pharmacy. Comment by Culhane, Nicole: Remember we are trying to get reimbursed for performing more and more services so this sentence may need to be re-worded. [3: Qato, D., Zenk, S., Wilder, J., Harrington, R., Gaskin, D., & Alexander, C. (2017, August 16). The availability of pharmacies in the United States: 2007–2015. Retrieved November 9, 2019, from https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0183172.] [4: Lam, O., Broderick, B., & Toor, S. (2018, December 12). How far Americans live from the closest hospital differs by community type. Retrieved November 18, 2019, from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/12/12/how-far-americans-live-from-the-closest-hospital-differs-by-community-type/.] [5: Grantner, G. R. (2019, June 18). Medication Adherence and the Hospital Pharmacist. Retrieved November 18, 2019, from https://www.uspharmacist.com/article/medication-adherence-and-the-hospital-pharmacist.]

As the field of healthcare evolves, we must continue to improve on methods of delivering care to the entire population. Pharmacists provide easily accessible care through their knowledge on medications and their other services such as compounding and medication counseling and review. It is our belief that pharmacists hold the key to a healthier society and without the role of the pharmacist, medication errors and the consequences associated with said errors would only increase. We implore you to read over our reasons for why pharmacists are integral to the healthcare team and how they benefit patient outcomes, but to also encourage your colleagues to understand and learn more about the pharmacist’s role. For any additional information, you can email us at (student name and email address) and we would be happy to answer any of your questions and concerns. Comment by Culhane, Nicole: Strong closing paragraph…..excellent job!

Sincerely,