I’ve been reading the stories in On Being a Pharmacist: True Stories by Pharmacists, and was inspired to write one of my own. I’ll resist starting it the way Snoopy always started his novel: “It was a dark and stormy night…”

Years in pharmacy practice give every one of us great stories. Maybe this one, which I was reminded of in a conversation with old friends, will stimulate one of yours.

We founded our first pharmacy network in the early 1980s. I was working in my Medicine Shoppe, trying to build it after opening in 1978. In my first 2 years of practice, I was held up at gunpoint three times and broken into twice. Each of those events was a story in its own right; but the net result, other than teaching me to be very observant, was that my work with local police not only netted convictions of the perpetrators, but also helped me to establish a nice relationship with the police and other city workers. This relationship was good for two reasons: I felt safer knowing policemen and their families were in and out of my pharmacy every day, and my young pharmacy practice benefited from taking care of those families.

One day I learned, out of the blue, that one local independent pharmacist had been enterprising enough to read the paper. He had seen an ad placed by the city requesting bids for a pharmacy benefit—and while the rest of the local pharmacy community missed it, he bid on, and won, all of the city employees’ pharmacy business. That meant that his awareness (and my lack of it) caused me to lose, overnight, all of those patients with whom I had worked so hard to develop relationships. There were lots of emotions swirling, but I soon figured out emotion was fruitless. What we needed was action. By this time, I was quite active in our local pharmacy association, so I talked with all the other owners and chain managers in the area. We put together a plan and built a network. We found a claims processor who could provide most of the services we needed, including ID cards for city employees, prior authorization for certain items, and so on. When the next contract renewal came along, we submitted a bid and won the business, which we held for many years. Eventually, we even let the other guy into our network.

That experience taught me a lot about building stuff—that it takes teamwork and imagination, unselfishness, and a willingness to commit to hard work. These are lessons that can be applied today as we face new challenges in the formation of accountable care organizations. These entities will be springing up everywhere, largely through collaborations in local communities like yours. What will your role be? Will you watch as others win the business? Or will you get together with those physician practices in your community to find ways to team up in the provision of excellent care? I think we are on the cusp of great opportunity. At APhA, we’ll be doing our part to get folks thinking about how pharmacists fit in the equation. But don’t wait on us. Dive in! See what you can create. And let us know. We’ll help you tell your story.

In the meantime, read other pharmacists’ impassioned stories in On Being A Pharmacist, published by APhA. Purchase this new book online through Pharmacist.com—for yourself, or as a holiday gift for a colleague.