Abstract
Professor Albert I. Wertheimer, BSPharm, PhD, MBA, has been awarded the 2019 American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) Board of Directors’ Donald E. Francke Medal, which honors pharmacists who have made significant international contributions to advance pharmacy. The citation reads, “Dr. Wertheimer’s work, which combines outcomes research and pharmacoeconomics, has helped patients around the world obtain safe and affordable medications and has contributed to reduced national health expenditures.” Dr Wertheimer accepted the award at the ASHP Midyear Clinical Meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada, on December 2019. He is the 24th individual to be honored with this award since it was established in 1971. Dr Wertheimer is a professor at the Nova Southeastern University College of Pharmacy in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and adjunct professor at Touro College of Pharmacy in Manhattan, New York.
Dr Wertheimer delivered the Donald E. Francke Medal Lecture entitled “International Pharmacy: Same Problems, but Different Solutions.” He spoke of discovering that there are many very smart people all over the world in pharmacy and that we have a lot to learn from others, even in the poorest, least developed countries, and in regions where we would not expect to observe great ideas. For example, the United States can even be called backward compared to many other developed countries; we have not adopted the metric system, we do not use the government to regulate drug prices to make medications available to the poor and uninsured. We do not control the number of pharmacy schools or their enrollments, leading to possible surpluses and a pendulum effect in school applications. We count out 47 or 63 tablets instead of using unit-of-use packaging in aseptic blister packages. We do not regulate the location of pharmacies, unlike most other countries.
Yes, we have much to offer the rest of the world such as continuing education, clinical pharmacy, automation, and so on, but we should not think that we could move the US system anywhere else and expect the same results.