Healthcare ranges from routine to complex, but in many states, doctors who could be focused on more complex care still spend valuable time treating patients with routine problems. Meanwhile, patients wait weeks for an appointment for what could have been done in half an hour, or worse for a diagnosis that was needed urgently. Letting pharmacists treat straightforward conditions, like the flu, alleviates the bottleneck for urgent or complex needs while making care more convenient for patients.
Many states only authorize pharmacists to provide a narrow set of services, and in many others, pharmacist prescribing still depends on collaborative practice agreements with a physician rather than broad independent authority. In only 12 states can pharmacists test and treat COVID-19 and the flu without physician oversight, and in 27 states they cannot treat either even with physician oversight. In many states, even treating strep throat remains restricted.
Pharmacists are often also barred from treating other simple, high-volume conditions such as uncomplicated urinary tract infections, minor skin conditions, and seasonal allergies. These are not complex cases requiring a physician’s full attention, but routine, protocol-driven problems that often send patients to higher-cost settings simply because the law blocks treatment at the pharmacy counter.
Preventive care is also often unnecessarily restricted. Delays in care for time sensitive health concerns, such as pre- and post-exposure prophylaxis for HIV (PrEP and PEP), are unnecessarily risky for treatment that could be routine.
With physicians in short supply, delays are often the real problem. The average wait time for a family medicine appointment is 23.5 days. The United States currently facing a shortage of more than 15,000 doctors, a figure projected to grow to 86,000 by 2036. Other studies show more than 100,000 doctors would be needed to meet patients’ needs over the next decade. Meanwhile, pharmacies are often the closest healthcare provider for patients, especially in rural areas. Pharmacy-based care can reduce wait times and transportation costs by allowing same-day treatment where patients already go to pick up medication. Routine care often does not require a physician at all, and research shows pharmacy treatment of routine ailments reduced costs by $278 per episode.
In many communities, the real choice is not between a pharmacist and a physician, but between pharmacy-based care and delaying treatment altogether. That is especially true in rural and underserved areas, where a pharmacy may be nearby even when a doctor, urgent care clinic, or hospital is not. Requiring physician involvement for routine care that a pharmacist can safely provide does not help patients. It suppresses competition, raises costs, and wastes limited physician capacity on cases that do not require it.
Independent pharmacist prescribing can also reduce clinician workload by addressing simple cases and allowing physicians to focus on more complex care. It increases the effective supply of care by making fuller use of providers already in practice. This is especially important in rural and underserved areas, where primary care is limited and hospitals are often scarce.
Expanding pharmacist prescribing does not mean replacing physicians with pharmacists. It means allowing pharmacists to treat clearly defined, low-risk conditions under standardized protocols, leaving the limited supply of physicians to handle more complex cases. Pharmacists already operate within heavily regulated practice environments, and routine, protocol-driven care can be delivered safely without forcing every patient into a separate physician visit.
State legislatures should give doctors more time to treat the patients only they have been trained to treat by empowering pharmacists to take over many routine healthcare issues. Replacing narrow prescription rules and physician-dependent collaborative practice agreements with broader independent authority for pharmacists to test and treat routine conditions under statewide standards would help patients access routine and specialty care more easily. At a minimum, states should allow pharmacists to manage common minor illnesses, initiate time-sensitive preventive therapies, and prescribe smoking cessation aids without requiring case-by-case physician oversight.
Justin Leventhal is a senior policy analyst for the American Consumer Institute, a nonprofit education and research organization that advocates for consumers through evidence-based analysis and data. Visit www.TheAmericanConsumer.Org or follow us on X @ConsumerPal.
