On June 4, I heard RADM Scott Giberson with the U.S. Public Health Service receive an award at the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) 2013 Summer Meeting & Exhibition in Minneapolis. During his acceptance speech, he shared his “elevator speech” for promoting provider status for pharmacists. I have captured it and share it below with his permission.

We could agree that the “burden” of health care in the United States statistically continues to be postdiagnosis. Over 76% of physician visits are chronic care. It can also be said the primary treatment method in the nation is undoubtedly through the use of medications. This incurs tremendous costs.

Keep that in mind and think about solutions to improve the health of the nation:

• Pharmacists are the second most highly trained health care professional (behind only physicians) based on years of formal education.
• The focus of our curriculum is mainly postdiagnosis including treatment of multiple chronic conditions where medications are the primary form of treatment.
• We are a primary key to cost containment and we have demonstrated an average return on investment of $4:1 over the last 2 decades.
• We are accessible everywhere. 270 million people visit a pharmacy each week. We are on every street corner in every town, city, and state across the nation.
• We have decades of factual evidence demonstrating we perform when given the opportunity to expand our scope.
• There is rarely evidence that refutes this data or that expanded scopes are ineffective.

Yet pharmacists are likely the most underutilized health care provider in the nation. We may be missing an opportunity to address health system burdens with one of the nation’s most capable providers.

I submit that every pharmacist in America should learn this by heart and use it whenever speaking with decision makers. We have probably all said these things ourselves, but perhaps never so concisely. You may remember a similar elevator speech in APhA President Steve Simenson’s inaugural address.

Thanks again Scott! For those of you who missed it, here is the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) link to both the 2011 USPHS pharmacy report to the Surgeon General and the Surgeon General’s letter of support that we have cited so many times.