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Coalition of Pharmacy Organizations Urges Congress to Pass ECAPS Legislation
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Key Takeaways
- ECAPS Act seeks to provide Medicare beneficiaries access to pharmacist-provided testing and treatment for common conditions.
- The legislation aims to address healthcare access gaps in underserved and rural areas by enabling pharmacist reimbursement under Medicare Part B.
The Ensuring Community Access to Pharmacist Services (ECAPS) Act would enhance Medicare coverage for pharmacist services and ensure seniors can access essential care in underserved areas.
The Future of Pharmacy Care Coalition, which includes national organizations such as the American Pharmacists Association (APhA), American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP), and the National Association of Chain Drug Stores (NACDS), has issued an urgent letter to Congress requesting the passage of the Ensuring Community Access to Pharmacist Services (ECAPS) ACT.1
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The bipartisan legislation, known as House Resolution (HR) 3164, would affirm that senior Medicare beneficiaries have access to pharmacist-provided treatment and testing services for conditions like COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and ensure that pharmacists can be reimbursed as providers under Medicare Part B for such services. Introduced by Reps. Adrian Smith (R, Nebraska), Brad Schneider (D, Illinois), Diana Harshbarger (R, Tennessee), and Doris Matsui (D, California), it could bridge gaps that currently prevent patients from underserved or rural areas of the country from receiving proper care for common illnesses.1-3
ECAPS would “ensure seniors, including those living in rural areas and vulnerable communities, can turn to their local pharmacists for testing and treatment services that can protect them from certain common respiratory conditions,” the Future of Pharmacy Coalition said in a news release. “Congress must move quickly and provide seniors with Medicare coverage in states where pharmacists can offer testing and treatment services for conditions that, although common, can quickly become life-threatening if not properly managed.”1
Ensuring access to common testing and treatment procedures is essential for providing equitable patient care. Community pharmacists often represent a frequent source for discussions regarding a patient’s health, with patients visiting such pharmacists twice as frequently as their primary care physicians, according to investigators. This increased reliance on community pharmacy has coincided with a depletion in rural health care services, with nearly 200 rural hospitals having closed over the last 2 decades, according to the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform. As rural health systems recede, pharmacists are becoming some of the only qualified care providers in their communities.1,4,5
Passage of ECAPS could also relieve the financial burden that many pharmacists encounter when providing these services through Medicare. Being properly reimbursed for these services is essential for community pharmacies that are often small in nature, underfunded, and serve rural populations. Additionally, since the COVID-19 pandemic, pharmacists have often been performing routine testing and treatment tasks along with their typical responsibilities, straining the bandwidth and resources of the pharmacy team. If this legislation were to pass, pharmacists could gain much-needed monetary flexibility to better serve the patients who need care the most.
This is not the first legislation to expand Medicare coverage to include pharmacist-provided services that has been introduced in the House of Representatives. In March 2023, as part of the 118th Congress, a previous form of the bill—the Equitable Community Access to Pharmacist Services Act, or HR 1770—was sponsored by Representative Smith and received 148 cosponsors from other representatives. After being referred to the Energy and Commerce Committee and Ways and Means Committee, the bill was not passed before the beginning of the 119th Congress, necessitating a reintroduction on the floor of the House.1,6
“ASHP strongly supports the Ensuring Community Access to Pharmacist Services Act,” Tom Kraus, vice president of government relations at ASHP, said in a news release from the organization. “ECAPS will enable Medicare beneficiaries to obtain testing and treatment for common infectious diseases from their pharmacists and recognizes the critical role pharmacists play as care providers for America’s seniors.”3
