Pharmacist's in Primary Care?

The decrease in the number of physicians that pursue primary care has been noted over the past few years. The impact of this has contributed to increasing health care costs, and and a decrease in patients seeking primary and preventative care. This dearth of primary care physicians essentially created the market for nursing practitioners and physician assistants. However, this has still not solved the problem.

So, could pharmacists help out? We know that we are trained in disease management-particularly those that are often controlled primarily by medication therapy-diabetes, anti-coagulation, asthma, heart failure....ummm...there's probably more but I read too good. Well, the good folks at JAMA thought they would take a look at what pharmacists can do in the CHF. They have a spin-off mag called the Archives of Internal Medicine. It's pretty good, no People magazine or anything, but I like it.

Anyways, here's the article that they printed in Internal Medicine. I heard about it, where else, but on the Wall Street Journal Blog. Check out the links in the article too-they talk about the decrease in utilization of primary care and increase in specialty reimbursement mentioned above. They also discuss the 10 City Challenge sponsored by the APhA Foundation.

Short rant here: Stupid WSJ also is now making you pay for their Health page. At the least, they still give you access to their blog. But come on, Rupert Murdoch (who recently purchased the WSJ from the Hathaways) let me have access to the WSJ!!! I'm looking for some kind of online petition to make it all free, but I haven't found it yet. Let me know if you do, please.