June 2023
Dear Colleagues,
It is difficult to believe that it has been nearly a year since my initial message. It has been an honor to serve as Chair, and I am incredibly grateful to have had the opportunity to lead and represent our Section. We have a thriving community of specialty pharmacy practitioners, each dedicated to advancing patient care and lifting each other up.
With that said, I wanted to catch everyone up on some of our Section highlights, as well as express my gratitude and mention a few things on the horizon.
With Gratitude
First, I want to acknowledge the relentless dedication and hard work of the Section Advisory Groups (SAGs) and Educational Steering Committee (ESC). Your expert guidance, insights, and creativity have been instrumental in making our strategic plan and objectives a reality. To all the members of our Executive Committee and our Board Liaison Vivian Bradley Johnson, I express my deepest admiration and appreciation. Your active engagement, shared knowledge, and willingness to collaborate have been pivotal in fostering a vibrant and dynamic community. Thank you also to our tremendous ASHP staff liaison, Gabrielle (Gabby) Pierce, as well as the other ASHP staff who have provided mentorship and guidance to our Section. As I’m sure anyone who has worked with her will confirm, Gabby’s ability to keep things organized, on-track, fun, and actionable is nothing short of miraculous.
As we welcome our new Chair, Denise Scarpelli, let us look forward to her continued inspiration and guidance. Additionally, congratulations to the slate of candidates for Chair Elect and Director at Large Elect. Be sure to vote in the upcoming election, which opens on June 15th.
Furthermore, a heartfelt thank you goes out to all members. Each one of you has played an integral role in our collective successes and it is your everyday contributions that truly make a difference. Your work has significantly contributed to the betterment of specialty pharmacy practice and, most importantly, to the lives of the patients we serve.
Section Achievements and Highlights
Our members have led and participated in numerous educational initiatives, webinars, podcasts, and roundtables throughout the year. They have also created a number of new resources, as well as updated existing materials and references. As always, the best place to start if you are looking for something is the ASHP Specialty Pharmacy Resource Center.
Our Section has leaned heavily into ASHP podcasts as a platform for sharing information. If you have not checked out the podcasts recently, I highly recommend putting one on next time you hop in the car (or if you are like me, when you mow the lawn). Our Workforce Development SAG recently published one on Employment Opportunities for Pharmacy Students in Health System Specialty Pharmacy. Our Accreditation and Compliance SAG recently released one on Navigating Specialty Pharmacy Accreditation Changes and has a couple of others set to release soon! You will also find a number of other podcasts available from this year and previous years that cover a variety of areas of specialty pharmacy practice, leadership, and the professional journeys of our members.
This year, we saw publication of the 2022 Survey of HSSP Practice: Clinical Services and we will get a look at the initial results of the 2022 Survey of HSSP Practice: Practice Models, Operations, and Workforce during the ASHP Summer Meeting in Baltimore, MD. These surveys serve as our testament to the uniqueness of health system specialty pharmacy practice, and I hope you will all find them helpful in your strategic planning efforts.
It is difficult to summarize the many other deliverables from the year, but here are a few! Our Section partnered with Section of Pharmacy Practice Leaders (SPPL) and Pharmacy Executive Leadership Academy (PELA) to hold virtual roundtables on the white hot topic of home infusion pharmacy services. Our Business Development SAG continued the tradition of surveying the use of technology platforms to facilitating connections and information sharing. Our Outcomes and Value SAG has made ongoing progress on outcome measure development and dashboard creation, and also continuously maintained our specialty Outcomes Literature Library. Our ESC has worked tirelessly to ensure we have the highest quality and most relevant topics slated for meetings and educational events. The roundtables our ESC held titled ‘Biosimilars: Clinical and Formulary Management’ and ‘Navigating Patient Access to Specialty Medication: A Discussion of Current Challenges’ were both informative and a great chance to share insights and best practices. Lastly, we hosted our first ever Specialty Pharmacy Resident Gems webinar, which provided an opportunity for residents to share research and quality improvement projects related to specialty pharmacy.
Simply put, together, we have worked towards enhancing our knowledge, skills, and expertise all while creating meaningful resources and elevating our collective voice. I am so proud to be a part of this community!
Eyes on the Horizon
It is crucial for us to keep our focus on the upcoming trends in health care and specialty pharmacy, and I am excited for the role that health system specialty pharmacies and our Section will play moving forward. New digital health technologies will continue to revolutionize how patients interact with (and share data with) their health care teams. Biosimilar availability and utilization will increase, and specialty pharmacies will play a critical role in understanding, navigating, and explaining their nuance. Demonstrating value and outcomes is in our DNA, but more opportunities to explore these concepts as part of value-based care and alternative payment models for high cost and complex medications will present themselves. Lastly, artificial intelligence and enhanced data analytics will enable us to extract meaningful insights, optimize medication management, identify high-risk patients, and enhance clinical decision-making in ways we can only start to imagine today. Each time we gather, let us seize the opportunity to learn, collaborate, and inspire one another. Together, we will address these trends head on, as we continue our mission of delivering exceptional care to our patients.
Cheers,
Scott L. Canfield, PharmD, CSP
Chair, Section of Specialty Pharmacy Practitioners (2022 – 2023)
[email protected]