Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm Janet Cooper. I'm the senior director of professional and membership affairs at the Canadian Pharmacists Association. With me is Phil Emberley, CPhA's director of pharmacy innovation. We're both pharmacists. CPhA represents the pharmacist profession in Canada. With over 37,000 pharmacists, ours is the third-largest health care profession. CPhA is also Canada's leading publisher of drug and therapeutic information for health care practitioners.
As the most accessible health care professionals in Canada, pharmacists are in a unique position to deliver a range of health-related services to Canadians. We are very pleased to meet with you today and highlight the unprecedented changes in pharmacists' scope of practice over the past several years. In fact, in terms of best practices, other countries look to Canada, as we are leading the way for expanded scope of practice for pharmacists. To support change, CPhA has been leading the blueprint for pharmacy initiative to achieve the vision for pharmacy, “Optimal drug therapy outcomes for Canadians through patient-centred care”.
We'll also discuss with you the significant role the federal government played in some of these changes in pharmacy. For decades our profession has been saying that we need to better use the unique knowledge and skills of pharmacists to improve drug therapy outcomes for Canadians. However, some of the major catalysts for the changes that we see today came from the federal government over a decade ago, working with their provincial/territorial counterparts and health care professional organizations, such as CPhA.
In 2002 both the Romanow commission and the Kirby Senate committee reports recognized the accessibility and underused skills of pharmacists and the need to expand their role. The 2003 health accord also identified pharmacists as a priority profession. The $800-million federal investment in the primary health care transition fund, or PHCTF, helped deliver change. Health Canada's health human resources strategy division played a leading role in engaging with the jurisdictions and health care professionals on primary care reform, health human resources planning, expanded scopes of practice, and supporting interprofessional education and collaboration.
l'll share with you some examples of the federal role that are specific to pharmacy.
The primary health care transition fund funded the IMPACT project in Ontario, which integrated pharmacists into family practice clinics. A focus of this project was to facilitate collaboration between pharmacists, family physicians, nurses, and other team members in this new model of practice. Today there are pharmacists working within such family practice teams across Canada.
PHCTF also funded CPhA for the development of e-Therapeutics, an online resource to provide physicians, pharmacists, and other providers with just-in-time access to evidence-based clinical decision support. Today e-Therapeutics is widely used, but we need to work with Canada Health Infoway and the jurisdictions to take it further. It needs to be integrated at the point of care into electronic medical records to improve prescribing and safe and cost-effective medication use.
Human Resources and Skills Development Canada funded the pharmacy human resources moving forward study, led by CPhA. The research and recommendations from this study were a key driver for the changes that have occurred since. HRSDC also funded further work by pharmacy regulators to support international pharmacy graduates and the introduction of a new health care profession, regulated pharmacy technicians.
Health Canada also funded, in part, the development of CPhA's online ADAPT training program. ADAPT focuses on patient care skills, such as assessment, documentation, evidence-based decision-making, and interprofessional collaboration. ADAPT provides pharmacists with the skills and confidence needed to take on an expanded role and to move from a focus on dispensing prescriptions to a focus on safe and effective outcomes. Not only has ADAPT won a national award, it is so effective in transforming pharmacists' approach to practice that we are now adapting it for use in the United States to support pharmacists there to take on expanded roles, as part of their health care reform.
Without the past support of the federal government, pharmacy in Canada would not be where it is today, and we would not be recognized as the world leader in pharmacy practice change. So where are we today, and what more needs to be done?
I'll turn it over to Phil.