InterSections Spring 2010 - 9

Blazing a

New Trail
for Pharmacy
twentY-fIVe YeaRS after the influential Hilton Head conference, ASHP and the ASHP Foundation are once again embarking on a groundbreaking national effort to guide the future of hospital and health-system practice. The Pharmacy Practice Model Initiative (PPMI), officially launched in 2009, will revisit the hard consensus-building work of Hilton Head and other ASHP-hosted legacy conferences as pharmacists in all practice settings debate what the future of the profession should look like. “National health care reform, constantly evolving technologies, massive amounts of new drugs entering the market every year, scientific breakthroughs… All of these and more are demanding that we, as pharmacists, really step up and begin to own the medication-use policies and procedures within our institutions,” said ASHP president Lynnae Mahaney, M.B.A., FASHP, chief of pharmacy services at the William S. Middleton Memorial Veterans Hospital in Madison, Wis. expectations Versus actual Opportunities “We’re in an environment where there is national concern about the future state of health care,” said David Chen, R.Ph., M.B.A., director of ASHP Phar-

Pharmacy Practice Model Initiative Looks to the Future
macy Practice Sections. “Additionally, we’re seeing growing demand for enhanced pharmacy services and increasing pressure to integrate technology advances. We really need a self-critical analysis of the state of pharmacy practice.” Although the Hilton Head conference and other ones like it successfully laid the groundwork for the all-Pharm.D. degree and many of the professional opportunities that pharmacists now enjoy, there is much more to achieve, according to Doug Scheckelhoff, M.S., ASHP vice president of professional development. “Hilton Head was focused on the clinical profession of pharmacy and the types of training needed to get there,” Scheckelhoff said. “It was really pivotal in setting a clear direction. The PPMI will be just as important, but in a different way.” A joint project of ASHP and the ASHP Foundation, the PPMI will comprise three components: an invitational summit this fall, a campaign to promote change, and demonstration projects funded by Foundation grants. At press time, McKesson Corporation had signed on as a Leadership-Level sponsor of the Initiative, and Omnicell, Inc. and CareFusion had signed on as Gold-Level sponsors.

Illustration by Matt Sweitzer

pages 8+9

intersections

spring 2010

InterSections Spring 2010

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of InterSections Spring 2010