Troy Trygstad, PharmD, PhD, MBA, is the executive director of CPESN USA, a clinically integrated network of more than 3500 participating pharmacies. He received his PharmD and MBA degrees from Drake University and a PhD in pharmaceutical outcomes and policy from the University of North Carolina. He has recently served on the board of directors for the Pharmacy Quality Alliance and the American Pharmacists Association Foundation. He also proudly practiced in community pharmacies across the state of North Carolina for 17 years.
It’s an exciting time for the profession of pharmacy, with diversity of opportunity continuing to grow dramatically as our health care system redesigns itself, slowly but surely moving from a system engineered for “sick care” encounters and mechanical throughput to one oriented toward health improvement and outcomes-based value.
It seems that just about every month now, there is another public outcry in response to a new innovator product that is priced well above convention or to a dramatic price hike for a product that has been in the marketplace for years.
For the past decade, health economists and policy makers have frequently espoused the following axiom: bending the cost curve will enable a sustainable health care system.
For those watching the generics marketplace over the past few years, the industry has been anything but boring or conventional.
For more than 3 decades now, pharmacy has been talking the talk but has struggled to walk the walk.
We can do more than act as dispensing police and check in with our state Prescription Drug Monitoring System; we can play an active role in preventing and treating this disease called drug addiction.
The magnitude of the benefit of OTC medications to the health care system is often underappreciated.
The term bellwether comes from an ageold practice in sheepherding of putting a bell on the sheep that leads the flock.
Groupthink can lead to decisions and actions within, and by, a group that are curious, seemingly disconnected, and often misunderstood from the perspective of stakeholders outside the group.