CEimpact Podcast

Pharmacist-Provided Addiction Treatment

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Pharmacists are stepping into a critical role in addiction treatment, expanding access to life-saving medications like buprenorphine through pharmacy-based MOUD clinics. This episode examines how this innovative model is transforming care for patients with opioid use disorder and what pharmacists need to understand before considering an expansion of services in this space. Tune in to learn how pharmacist-led addiction treatment can improve patient outcomes, strengthen communities, and help combat the opioid crisis.

HOST
Joshua Davis Kinsey, PharmD
VP, Education
CEimpact

GUEST
Korey Kreider, PharmD
Pharmacist, Owner
Medicine Man

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CPE INFORMATION
Learning Objectives
Upon successful completion of this knowledge-based activity, participants should be able to:
1. Explain the role of pharmacists in providing medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD) and the impact of pharmacy-based addiction treatment services.
2. Identify key regulatory and scope of practice considerations pharmacists must evaluate before expanding services to include addiction treatment.

0.05 CEU/0.5 Hr
UAN: 0107-0000-25-190-H01-P
Initial release date: 5/19/2025
Expiration date: 5/19/2026
Additional CPE details can be found here.

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Speaker 1:

Hey, ce Impact subscribers, Welcome to the Game Changers Clinical Conversations podcast. I'm your host, josh Kinsey, and, as always, I'm super excited about our conversation today. The opioid crisis continues to devastate communities, and some pharmacists are in a unique position to expand access to life-saving medication for opioid use disorder. In this episode, we'll discuss how pharmacists are stepping into addiction treatment, the opportunities and challenges of providing medications for opioid use disorder, and what it takes to make the service a reality in community pharmacy practice. And I'm so excited to have with us today whom I consider to be, after discussing this with him, an expert in this space. So, corey Kreider, thank you so much for joining us. We're so glad for you to take time out of your busy schedule and help us out today.

Speaker 2:

No, thank you very much, josh. This is quite the honor, so I'm glad to get my story out there.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely yeah. So, corey, for our listeners that don't know, you go ahead and take a couple minutes and introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about your practice site and maybe why you're passionate about this topic, and then we can go from there.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely Well. My name is Corey Kreider. I graduated from WSU Pharmacy School 2014. I was born and raised an independent. I love independent pharmacy. I love the interaction I get with patients. I'm big on community care. That's exactly where my practice kind of took off was as soon as I became an owner three years ago. I really wanted to be more clinical, more involved in community care and kind of put patients first, and I started with small clinics as far as strep flu, all those like basic test to treat protocols, and then I really worked into where we are now with our buprenorphine clinic and helping addiction in all of our community, because there's a growing concern in our community as far as level of access like there's not much access out there and, um, the biggest thing is I wanted it was to help my community out with this.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's great. Well, corey and I chatted earlier about this topic. I was just kind of briefing him on it and I'm I'm telling you all right now this is going to be a great episode. You're going to learn a lot and it's going to open your eyes to things that you can and should be doing as a pharmacist. So, without further ado, again, thank you so much and let's just jump right into the content. You're welcome. So, corey, tell us a little bit about current challenges. So I'll brief it as an overview of the opioid crisis, but I'm not looking for any kind of specific numbers or stats or anything, but just kind of telling us. You know, you mentioned your community. It was becoming difficult, access was difficult to get for care. So you know what are some of the things that we can look for in our communities as pharmacists? That signal hey, maybe we should be in this space Like how can we help?

Speaker 2:

The biggest thing is a lot of primary care physicians are not seeing people with addiction. They have to go to kind of these special clinics, that kind of pop up and nothing against them, but they don't bill insurance. A lot of them are cash pay and unfortunately, this population may be on Medicaid and I would say about 85% for us are on Medicaid and they can't afford cash. And if they do, they're making difficult choices. Am I going to buy groceries this month? Am I going to pay rent? Are they going to pay a car payment? These are difficult choices they have to do. Are they going to pay a car payment Like? These are difficult choices they have to do.

Speaker 2:

These appointments can run anywhere from $200 to $300 a pop. Some are making them come in every two weeks. So double that and, yeah, that's where the money starts. Like, wow, how are you guys affording this? And they have Medicaid and that should be $0 for them. So that's where you can start looking around and seeing.

Speaker 2:

And the nice thing is is I own four pharmacies and I'm able to interact with these patients just as a pharmacist. That's it right now. And when we started seeing all this there, we noticed like you're paying cash. Oh yeah, my Medicaid doesn't cover this, I was told, and we're like it does, like we can easily run it for you and just as a pharmacy, we're helping them out with that. But you can see, these clinics, they just they're more concerned on hey, I don't want to deal with insurance, I don't want to deal with Medicaid, I just want to bill cash and that's it. And that's the sad thing, because these guys can't afford it. They're, they're making choices, like I said, groceries, and if they pay for their appointment, maybe they're buying their medicine on the streets and that's what we started seeing a lot of that popped up.

Speaker 1:

And that's a problem. I mean, that's a huge problem.

Speaker 2:

Because that's the only thing is is we can recognize those tablets Like that's, that's our bread and butter, but like they don't know what they're looking at.

Speaker 1:

They don't know.

Speaker 2:

Am I? Did I get a simvastatin instead of buprenorphine?

Speaker 1:

right they don't know that and they have or what was it, what else was it laced with? Or you know what was it, was it being made somewhere else, or you know, broken down and then made again. I don't know exactly, and that's the, the.

Speaker 2:

It's the sad thing because we all know drug dealers are not trustworthy. So exactly, you can't trust them and that's where this problems and it's just feeding the fire and you have to figure out how to get better access of care for these patients right and I want to go back to it.

Speaker 1:

I know I know you were very kind in saying you know no shade to this or whatever, but I want to call out again those clinics are not charging medicaid because they feel the reimbursement is not enough. Right Like that is that is true.

Speaker 2:

That's what they've told their patients that they don't. They don't make enough so they won't bill them. And as pharmacists we know we get paid, usually on average every 28 to 34 days. That's what our bill comes in these Medicaid at least ours. Again, our state's different. Ours is in Idaho. Our state pays every seven days, so you're getting your money quick. They just don't like the amount and unfortunately that's what they're refusing to pay.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah. I think that's important to call out because, again, you know you may say, oh well, my town has some of these clinics and so that's fine, I don't need to be in this space, but need to dig a little deeper to see are they actually billing or are they creating social determinants of health issues for a lot of patients out there? You know, are we creating food insecurities or transportation problems or whatever?

Speaker 2:

And you're absolutely right. And that's the problem too. Maybe the access is there, but is it good access? Is it taking full advantage of their situation? And unfortunately, a lot of these are not.

Speaker 1:

Are not. Yeah, and that's good to know. Okay, so I always like to also make things foundational, more so for myself than maybe most of the listeners. They might get tired of me always saying let's go back to the basics, but I've been out of school for a long time so it's always good to refresh my memory on things. So, corey, tell us a little bit about, just remind us exactly about, addiction treatment. Obviously it involves buprenorphine, but just a little bit about the drug and why it's the mainstay and the important one, and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2:

So the mainstay it's a partial agonist of the opiate receptor and the big thing is it kind of helps get people off the addiction and I would say 50 to 60% are oxycodone or even heroin. I have about maybe 20% that are coming off heroin that has that strong binding capability to that opiate receptor. So you need something to partially activate it to where it. Hey, I can come down off this if I just slowly give it a little fire and that's pretty much what the drug is doing. It's really helping that addiction kind of satisfy but slowly taper off. And that's the best thing with this is you can't just cold take it off, because then they go into immediate withdrawals and that is not fun.

Speaker 2:

Patients hate that and it scares them like they never want to get off of this drug. So and that's where you have to take it. It's it's a real science on how to taper someone off and treating this drug. Like it's a real give and take and everybody's different. There is no cut and dry formula with every single patient. There's a good template for patients but everyone's different on how they respond to treatment.

Speaker 1:

Sure, yeah, for sure, and again it's. It's not a one size fits all, it's not just a oh, you need buprenorphine in this dose because you're a female, like it's going to be different.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, okay, all right. So we've kind of set up again the idea of pharmacy being in this space of addiction treatment and, you know, obviously utilizing a medication that we have access to because we're pharmacy. So I'd like to really dig into what are, what is the opportunity here for pharmacists and pharmacies, dig into what is the opportunity here for pharmacists and pharmacies. So I'll just let you kind of run with kind of how you came about and how it's set up. And I think the first thing that I have on my little reminder list here is that you actually have a DEA number, which I find fascinating.

Speaker 1:

So just kind of go into the spiel, lead us into how you came about that and understanding that in your state. And I'll also call out I'm sure you'll say it many times as well some of these things are state specific. So be sure, if you're listening, that you're checking what it is your state allows, your scope of practice, your board of pharmacy, checking with them. But I think, just in general, getting this information out there and for you to explore on your own what it is you can do in your state is going to be just mind blowing for everyone. So, uh, corey, I'll let you take that Absolutely.

Speaker 2:

So, I am very excited to practice in Idaho. Um, we are kind of setting the tone. We are calling it standard of care, Um, and it's pretty much it's starting to go to other states now because we started with, like I said, strep flu UTIs. We had set protocols in place that we could prescribe for as long as we had a test to treat model and that started evolving and we said, hey, we can do this. And then we started doing it really well, and hats off to our board director it was Alex Adams, now Nikki Chopsky and then Jen Adams and Tim Frost. Hats off to these guys who pushed it because they fought for we can do this. Session opened up and they started really talking about pharmacists needs to be a prescriber, they need to have this kind of standard of care model where we're in the forefront of kind of access to care, Like we're the most accessible healthcare provider there is.

Speaker 2:

You can't call your doctor and get on hold and wait 30 seconds and be like oh, I'm here to help you. You can, you're a pharmacist, but you're independent. You're getting within a pharmacist within 30 seconds. So that is something important that we have to realize and that's where our board directors fought for. So in that session we were able to become full prescribers. We had the same practice or prescribing capability as nurse practitioners, mds, dos. So we were a mid-level is what they called us.

Speaker 2:

And so by doing that, idaho kind of had some things to consider hey, we need access of care up north, we need some more of these clinics to help with these addiction populations, and that's where they kind of like Corey, when this passes and it flew through. So the House and the Senate, we want to get set up. And so I kind of already had an inside track on like, okay, I can do this, I know I can. This is something I've always wanted to do and it just brings us closer to our patients. And so I started working out our kind of our whole clinic idea what's our mindset, what are, what are we passionate about, what are we going to concentrate on?

Speaker 2:

And then I knew I need to get a DEA because this is a controlled substance and I need to get that. So I had all my paperwork teed up, ready to go and as soon as that governor signed it July 1, I had my application in. That Monday, I think was July 3. I had it in, sent to the DEA and I had it in two weeks and which was kind of cool because that was the first pharmacist in the United States with no practice agreement. I don't have anyone overseeing me, I don't have a medical director. I am the first pharmacist with my own DEA and that was pretty cool I didn't have a medical director.

Speaker 2:

I am the first pharmacist with my own DEA and that was pretty cool. I didn't know that at the time until the board was kind of telling me because they actually had to change their online application. Like, corey, you're not set up to do this. I said no, I am the new rules. And they're like no, you're not. And of course I had to call someone. I think I called Nikki and literally they called me back, you're right.

Speaker 2:

And then that was it and they had to change their thing. But it started happening and I'm like, oh okay, this is real. And so I got my DEA, got it done, I think right at the end of July, and we started seeing patients end of August, early September and I spent the whole month marketing pretty much the first week first couple of weeks of August, early September, and I spent the whole month marketing pretty much the first week first couple of weeks of August making sure like, hey guys, I can help, this is it, and I'll tell you what that and I know it may go into another segue, but hurdles man, these patients did not believe me. They all thought I was Santa Claus or the elf or something, because they were like there's no way, this is $0. They were trained, they have to pay cash, dr Justin.

Speaker 1:

Marchegiani. Well, and to clarify, I mean so these were previously your patients that you were filling the medications for, but they were going to these other, you know, addiction treatment clinics and that's where they were being told hey, it's cash only, it's cost this much, whatever. So that, so I mean in their defense, it makes sense when you come up and say, hey, you can start coming to me for free, like I would also be like that's the worst to catch, you know.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, definitely a catch, and that's why I'm like, okay, and I'm trying to explain it to them. But finally we had someone take a leap of faith and they said that they're like where's the where are you going to pop out and charge me 300 bucks?

Speaker 2:

I'm like, I'm not it's already taken care of like that. That was the point of this clinic was to make it cost effective for you and for our community. And after that wildfire, like then it was, I wasn't something like Santa Claus, it was. I was real. I'm here, help, I'm here to take care of you. And then the patient started pouring in and then kind of rose a new set of challenges for me. Um, and I'll explain that right now.

Speaker 2:

As far as other providers did not like that, uh, especially from these clinics, they called me unethical. They said I didn't know what I was doing and they didn't understand. I did double the training they did. I did the mid-level practitioner CE course, which is eight hours, and then I did the MD right out of med school CE course. So I did 16 hours, double what they're required. And they didn't know that. They complained to my board, their board of medicine, but I had nothing. I was doing illegally. I was.

Speaker 2:

I was so on top of my game as far as making sure all my documentation if the DEA ever rolled in I had everything lined up. My state board was amazing because before I even went going they came in about every two weeks to say, hey, corey, do you have any more questions? I said, yes, I have questions on this and, like I was telling Josh before how they nailed me not nailed me, but they're like Corey, my password to my iPad was all ones and they're like Corey, you got to change that. I'm like, okay, that was the one thing. They were like this has to go. So it was kind of funny and I like talking about it. I'm like I had everything wrapped up as far as when I hit the ground. You're not going to come at me for some technicality. Like I'm here to treat patients. I'm here, I'm compliant with the DEA, I'm compliant with the board, but they didn't like that and that's fine. I was is my goal was patient first.

Speaker 2:

Like you're not going to sway me and call me unethical, Like I knew I was doing something for the patient first. It wasn't about the money, it wasn't about stealing their patients, Even though there were my patients. For 10 years I've known these patients and that was where they're like well, how are we supposed to send people to you? We don't trust you and I'm like you've been trusting me for 10 years, Like I just happened.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I filled their prescriptions and it became. It became muddy for a bit. Even other pharmacists were kind of stepping out saying, hey, you shouldn't be doing this Like we should. We should be behind the counter. And I'm the type of guy that loves being uncomfortable and love learning new things, because if you're uncomfortable you're. You're in something new, and that's my, my, my yeah it's my mindset. Like I got it.

Speaker 2:

I got to know something new. I always want to. Hey, I can do that Like kind of hold my beer mindset Like I want to do this and I want to do it, and I want to be the best at it and I'm a very competitive guy as far as, like, I want to be the best I can be at this position and I have so much love for my community. It is unreal, because I was pretty much born and raised in here since I was five, same with my wife.

Speaker 2:

She was actually born here. So, like, this community is everything to us, so I want to make it.

Speaker 2:

Exactly, and they all knew me. I mean, a lot of my patients have knitted blankets for my kids, so they know me and that's what I want it to stick with. And so I kept that focus. And, yeah, doctors called me up, yelling at me and and between me and you, I'm not the guy to yell at because I'm going to spit it right back, like I don't back down, I don't care if you're a doctor, I don't care if you're a DOMD, like you, don't scare me, I'm patient first. So as soon as you attack me and my patient.

Speaker 2:

It's on.

Speaker 1:

And I mean, let's state the obvious. You know the hypocritical. The issue here is that they were, you know, calling you unethical when, here, they were billing for something that could have been.

Speaker 2:

Could have been for zero.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so, yeah. So let's talk about you touched on and we've talked about how it changed lives. I mean it completely, because now your patients no longer had to make the choice of groceries or medication, or groceries or addiction treatment, and so we're certainly making that impact on community, which was one of your initial goals. But let's talk just in general, too, about patient outcomes. Like, what did you see in regards to outcomes as far as like?

Speaker 2:

relapses and treatment like so the for the first 10 months we had zero relapses. Uh, the biggest thing I wanted to push was primary care, overall health. Not only I'm treating your addiction and we're making it everything kind of in a healthier lifestyle. My my thing was primary care. A lot of these people didn't even have primary care providers. They just saw those clinics so I'm like where's?

Speaker 2:

your labs and they're like. We never got labs. I'm like, when you went through these meetings, did you guys talk about like your labs, your hormones, anything, and they're like no it was five minutes. Pretty much. Here's your script. You're good, cool here. Pay on the way out and I'm like you got to be kidding me.

Speaker 2:

So I think I took um. I think there were. Well, with my college in southern idaho we're doing a um published journal and one of the facts that I wanted to bring up was my big thing was primary care. Almost 90% did not have a primary care and of that 90% we have almost all but once I think it's like 96% converted to see their primary care. They already got their labs. I have them on file because I'm like you have to give me your labs, like I need to show that, that. So now they have labs, they're getting treatments. They're like hey, did you know I was vitamin D deficient? I said, yeah, pretty much everyone in North Idaho was vitamin D deficient, so that is great, but at least we have it on record. You're getting labs, you're getting treated for. Something else, and that was the big thing for me was the outcomes, not only for treating the addiction but overall health.

Speaker 2:

We did have a couple relapses after 10 months, but you're going to get those, I knew they were coming. It's just how you treat them. You have a protocol in set and we did. We handled them at that time. And to go back to where we kind of got the pushback from providers, it took about six months before I was treated as one of their own colleagues. They were starting to refer patients to me and say, okay, you're, you're, you're the real you're legit.

Speaker 2:

Exactly I. I made it to that platform as far as okay, we can discuss patients now, and I started working with these clinics. They would send over people from methadone clinics. I hey, corey, we need to be converted to buprenorphine from him Like, okay, let's do it, and we would. We would, we would tag team this together. We'd make sure that patient would safely transfer from methadone to buprenorphine and then I would take over treatment or vice versa. That's what we had to do with our two relapses. Uh, I had to make sure they were in that clinic and they took them over. They've been. They've been out seven months.

Speaker 2:

Um, sober so that's a good thing, and next month they come back to me for treatment so it's. It's one of those nice kind of full circles like, okay, we got them, they were very clean, and then all of a sudden they they had a hiccup, they had some, some issues, and they relapse and and that's which like you said happens. I mean's going to happen, no matter what like that's what addiction does, and so we have to treat it. We have to know how to handle it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And that's the biggest thing is going forward is you know, you have these bumps. You've got to figure out how to treat them, how to deal with the patients. You can't get mad. You got to figure out how do we solve this. Move forward, get past it.

Speaker 1:

And I like what you said. I want to touch on two things. One of the things you said was you had a protocol in place. You knew that a relapse was coming and you were ready for it, and you already had a policy and a protocol in place for that, and I think that that's really important and you know we could extrapolate this to any test and treat service that you're doing, if you're dipping your toe in the water or if you're just starting to do immunization services or you know whatever it is. Again, that's really important to call out is you said earlier about documenting and staying compliant and then also making sure that you have a protocol in place for something that happens, whether it be in a reaction you know an adverse event or whether it be, in this case, a relapse. So the other thing I wanted to touch on you talked about patient outcomes are improved because you've got them into primary care. Are we talking like high cholesterol and diabetes were also found Like? Is that what you're saying Depression?

Speaker 2:

vitamin D, there's labs, there's cholesterol, everything is being treated. Now, like I come back and they're like hey, corey, they put me on three meds, my blood pressure was high and I'm like that's why we go to the doctor, like, even though maybe something doesn't feel wrong, there could be something on the inside and that's what I also showed the state Idaho like, hey guys, I'm preventing something that could go down the road.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you're paying for more labs up front because these guys never seen their primary, but we may catch cancer in the beginning instead of that or something more serious, it's just you never know, even if you catch diabetes and you prevent, you know, amputations from, you know, I mean there's so many complications with diabetes that are expensive and require hospitalization and whatever.

Speaker 1:

So even if it's just something as simple as diabetes, I mean there are so many people out there that don't even realize that they have that either. So, yeah, that's great. So one of the other things that I think you mentioned on our initial call was you know just how not only were outcomes improved and now you've mentioned you know like the actual primary care outcomes were improved as well but also just the community got better and safer because you're not having people on the streets trying to buy drugs because now they can afford to actually get them, because they're affording their zero, their zero copay. You know plan. So so, so yeah, I just kind of talk a little bit maybe about how that kind of bubbled over into the community and just kind of making it stronger oh, absolutely like the.

Speaker 2:

if I had like probably six or seven because I had to do some video testimonies for the state of idaho to kind show like this is what's happening. I mean these patients were crying on the on the video, like I can't believe this is happening. Like I can afford groceries, I can afford daycare. Like I can actually go to work and not stress. One said that they can quit their third job. Like like you have three jobs. Like I hear people, yeah, doing two, but this person had three jobs. Like I can quit that now because I don't have to afford this. Like it was mind-blowing the amount of lives we changed uh, just by getting it to bill through medicaid.

Speaker 2:

and not only that, helping their families with, like hey, high blood pressure, pre-diabetes, like this is something that they're like, hey, I'm taking care of myself, like I have selfworth, I can move forward in life knowing, hey, I'm going to be taken care of. You can't really put a price tag on that?

Speaker 1:

No, and you can't really put an outcome number on that, you know. But again, the personal stories I think are super important to share. It is so, yeah. So some of the challenges you mentioned, corey, were the pushback from prescribers and how to overcome that resistance. And I really want to touch on in our last couple of minutes here again reiterating the fact that all states are different. Be sure you're checking your scope of practice, understanding what it is you can and cannot do in your state and whatever. But let's touch briefly on, without going into details because I don't want to break any kind of rules there with reimbursement, but you mentioned that you're being reimbursed by Medicaid. Are there other opportunities out there? And like, how did you know that that was an opportunity for you to bill Medicaid for this service?

Speaker 2:

So I knew Medicaid has been working in the state of Idaho for standard of care and noticing we are providers and we need to get paid like providers. So as soon as that providership thing happened in 2023, we became the same as an NP PA as far as reimbursement. Now you just have to show those clinical services and bill for them. So I knew I can bill them like granted. It was tough because we're pharmacists, I don't know medical billing, but it took some time to learn and learn all those.

Speaker 2:

But there's other opportunities. I'm working with Blue Cross of Idaho. I'm working with Blue Cross, blue Shield, just to see about private insurances. Like I can show you how I can prevent drastic outcomes in money if you give me this patient, pay me for this and I will show you how I can help with outcomes. That's what we're trying right now. Medicare still hasn't, because they don't recognize us as providers, but at least in my state. I'm just working with private insurances. Medicaid for sure. Medicaid would probably be the easiest within states, just because they have to pay a lot and if you can prove, hey, I can save you guys money.

Speaker 1:

They're gonna do it. Yeah, exactly, yep, that makes sense. Um, so the other thing I wanted to touch on briefly was um, obviously, from where I sit, education is important and training is important, and so you touched on that and there there is a specific place to go for this, and you gave me the website and I forget what it stood for, but it's S-A-M-H-S-A.

Speaker 2:

Yep.

Speaker 1:

Yep and PCSS Yep, yep and PCSS, yep. And so so that's where the training opportunities were for, you know, being able to, to be in this addiction treatment space, correct?

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, and they were free because their their government funded with grants. And now there's there's now a pharmacist one which you actually get credit for pharmacy. When I took it two, two, three years ago, it was only mid-levels and MDs, so I didn't get credit for it, but you at least got the certificate. Hey, I took that. I just could not apply it to my own CE. But now they have CE for pharmacists, because we're starting to crack through this space Like we can do this, guys going forward.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and that makes me start thinking about what are some courses that we can have in our catalog that you know are continuing the education or that are you know bringing up other things that you need to know in that space? Because, as you mentioned and again it just kind of strengthens the point when you said, we're also getting them primary care as well, and so that strengthens the fact that in this addiction treatment space you also need to know about diabetes treatment and the cholesterol, like you need to know about all the basics You're a provider, and that's you have to be a well-rounded provider.

Speaker 2:

Like yeah, the foot in the door is the addiction clinic, but everything else like it can happen. Where you're prescribing depression meds, you're whatever you is in your tool bag. That's what standard of care is. You have to show you're prepared for it. And if you say, hey, I wanted this antibiotic, are you good with training on all that, I'm like yeah, I am, I know antibiotics. Back to front, like, and you prove it. So that's standard of care.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, that's great. Well, Corey, the one thing I want to just kind of wrap back to and just make sure to reiterate is that pharmacists can and absolutely are in the addiction treatment space. They can be, they should be, and there are opportunities there. Reiterate once again be sure you're checking your state, making sure that you're understanding what you can and can't do, but also be innovative. I mean, I feel like you're. You knew that this was coming, you stayed at, you stayed on the forefront, you were advocating, I mean. So you understood this, and that's when we preach like advocate for the profession make sure you know what's going on at the state level, at the federal level, whatever, because you knew, you stayed informed and you knew it was coming on the pipe and so you got prepared and you knew how to do this. And you know I also think it's important to note you stuck your toe in the water first with test and treat services, other, you know other simple ones, I guess I would say, because I feel like addiction treatment is is quite complex and so, yeah, a little complex, um, but you know, I think that's just important to show that you, you know the profession, I think, is poised to change and we have to keep pushing that needle, and these are great ways to do that. So, and the other thing I wanted to touch on, we talked about this. We didn't get to it Now, we ran out of time, but I'll whet your appetite.

Speaker 1:

As a listener, corey mentioned how, when he started these services, he used everything that was free. So he used a free platform for virtual visits. He used free sign-up, scheduling things E-H-R, yes. Calories, yeah, free E-H-R. So again, I think that's a big take home here as well is be innovative and be creative. Starting a new service, something like this, or even dipping your toe in the water with a test and treat. It doesn't have to be expensive, it doesn't have to break the bank to start this service. It's something that is really an opportunity there if you're creative with it. So, yeah, well, corey, what's the game changer here? I always like to wrap up the episode and just kind of reiterate the game changer here. What would you summarize for our audience?

Speaker 2:

Exactly how you put it. We, as pharmacists, are ready for this and as you stay focused, you stay involved in your community. On the federal level, the state level, be ready to take your shot, because this was my shot to prove hey, pharmacists can do this. And if I was the only one out there, fine, I'll do it and I'll advocate for the profession, because, going forward, we have to show we can do this, because we can do this.

Speaker 2:

We can do primary care Guys. We've been doing this for 10 years and haven't gotten paid for it. We are just as good as them. So we have to show them. When it's our turn, show them, and we can easily that's great.

Speaker 1:

That's great. Well, corey, thanks again. So much Thanks for sharing your story, thanks for giving us your time. I can see you're still at work, and so I appreciate you going to the back and taking an hour out of your time to record this episode with us, so thank you so much.

Speaker 2:

Thank you and you're very welcome, and thank you to all the listeners. I love getting the story out because I want to encourage more to do this.

Speaker 1:

That's right. That's right. Well, thank you. If you're a CE plan subscriber, be sure to claim your CE credit for this episode of Game Changers by logging in at CEimpactcom. And, as always, have a great week and keep learning. I can't wait to dig into another game changing topic with you all next week.