The Pharmacist / Spring 2022 / Volume 44 / Issue 2

Dr. Soojin Jun is a
board-certified geriatric
pharmacist in Illinois and
Wisconsin. She is also a
certified professional in
patient safety (CPPS) and
a certified professional in
healthcare quality (CPHQ).
After losing her dad to
many gaps in healthcare
as a minority caregiver,
one of them a medication
adverse event, she
changed her career from
a wedding videographer
to a pharmacist. Currently,
she works as an inpatient
pharmacist and also a
Salk Health Activist fellow
at Jewish Healthcare
Foundation. She is a
cofounder of Patients for
Patient Safety U.S., a group
of patient safety activists
who are committed to
activating U.S. healthcare
according to the Global
Patient Safety Action Plan
2021–2030 of the World
Health Organization. She
specializes in medication
therapy management
and believes empathy
in healthcare can make
healing possible in any
relationship of healthcare.
She has experience in both
inpatient and outpatient
pharmacies and has
worked as a population
health pharmacist for heart
failure patients. She is also
an ambassador for the
Patient Safety Movement
Foundation, a nonprofit
organization dedicated to
patient safety worldwide.
She passionately speaks
up about patient safety,
patient rights, health equity,
the expansion of roles of
pharmacists in public health
and policy, and patient
advocacy for voiceless
patients.
Three Reasons Why Recognizing
Pharmacists as Providers Can Help Solve
Public Health Crisis in the United States
Here are three ways pharmacists can help address the two most
pressing problems of healthcare in the United States.
BY SOOJIN JUN, PHARMD ’13, BCGP, CPPS, CPHQ
After losing my dad to medical gaps and adverse
events from medications as a minority patient, I
decided to change careers and went from being a
videographer to being a pharmacist. Through my naive
yet passionate endeavor, I thought I could improve
healthcare one patient at a time. I was so eager for
change that I created a business plan with my friends
for a pharmacist-mediated digital health solution that
would allow patients and caregivers to coordinate care
together with doctors and hospitals, an idea directly
inspired by my personal experience as a caregiver
before graduation.
I interacted with entrepreneurs from StartUp Health,
PillPack, and incubator 1871 (now Matter) as well
as venture capitalists and competed in different
competitions, including South by Southwest. I enrolled
in the health informatics graduate program to make the
app a possibility with a targeted clinical trial for minority
patients in mind. I could not continue after I became
pregnant with my third child, but I gained valuable
lessons and observations from this experience.
There were not many pharmacists in the middle of this
innovation movement and conversation because we
could not bill as providers; innovators did not look to
pharmacists, with whom they could and should partner, to
bring changes.
At the time there was a petition going around started
by Sandra Leal, now the president of the American
Pharmacists Association (APhA), asking for federal
recognition of pharmacists as providers under Medicare.
I decided to help spread the word with another
student in Texas, Steve Soman. We created
a Facebook page, “Recognize Pharmacists
as Providers,” and posted the efforts on
the Facebook pages of other colleges
of pharmacy. The original Change.org
petition was moved to the White House
petition site, gained traction, and
received a response as promised after
reaching the target of 25,000 under
the administration of Barack Obama.
Although federal recognition was
not achieved and the response was
far from what we were looking for,
it created a conversation. California became the first
state to recognize pharmacists as providers in 2013.
Since then, we have 37 states recognizing pharmacists
as providers. However, lack of federal recognition still
slows innovation that we desperately need, especially
in cutting costs and optimizing therapies for chronic
illnesses. I know billions of dollars are often attributed
to a lack of “compliance” with medications. To me, this
is a tunnel-visioned estimate of the cost. (By the way,
patient advocates cringe over that word, compliance, so
if your organization claims to be patient-centric, please
consider avoiding the word.)
The first and foremost value of recognizing pharmacists
as providers is that we can help deprescribing
medications and guide patients to healthier lives for
many chronic illnesses. Many insurance and government
sponsored programs are wasting money by “restricting”
how pharmacists should practice under their laws and
regulations when they can better use the time and money
by “guiding” how pharmacists could practice as providers.
There are many pharmacists who are burnt out of
practicing in the boxed set of rules that clearly do not
bring the real results we want to see in patients. Many
functional medicine pharmacists who look at patients as
a whole, for example, have created their own practices.
However, because pharmacists are not providers in
many states, the results pharmacists can bring are more
regional than widespread. With telehealth and digital
health tools, this is changing. Still, too many barriers
continue exist for pharmacists.
The second equally important value of
recognizing pharmacists as providers
is that we can guard patient safety
more effectively. Traditionally,
nurses and doctors have been in
the main roles of patient safety
and still are. However, as Lucian
Leape, the renowned father of
the patient safety movement,
had written in his published
paper, pharmacists’
participation in intensive
care unit rounds
reduced medical
22 THE PHARMACIST PHARMACY.UIC.EDU