Pharmacist shortage seen rising in U.S.

Next year’s implementation of a new Medicare drug benefit is expected to increase the nation’s demand for pharmacists, who already are in short supply.

About 230,000 pharmacists were employed in 2002, and 25,000 more will be needed by 2012,according to the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“The good news is although there is a shortage of pharmacists, there is no shortage in the number of people who want to become pharmacists,” said David Knapp, the dean for University of Maryland’s Pharmacy School.

Mr. Knapp said 260,000 pharmacists would be needed by2020, with an expected shortfall of 157,000.

The shortfall is largely being caused by the increased services patients and doctors are demanding from pharmacists, he said.

Even though there has been a surge in applications duringthe past decade, “we’re not graduating enough students,” Mr. Knapp said. The school, which increased its capacity four years ago, has been graduating 120 students each spring.

While pharmacist vacancies at drugstore chains are slowly dropping from a record high in 2001, the amount is still “substantial,” according to the latest survey by the National Association of Chain Drug Stores, an Alexandria trade group for 200 companies operating pharmacies.

There were 4,024 pharmacist openings in July, down 48 percent from a five-year peak of 7,743 vacancies in August 2001, the report said.

Although the number of openings has plunged, drugstores and pharmacy schools will need to step up their efforts to keep the number of openings from tumbling back into a “crisis period,” said Kurt Proctor, spokesman for the association.

Prescription drug use is rising for all ages, according to a December Health and Human Services Department report, with 44 percent of Americans on at least one prescription from 1999 to 2000. About 39 percent of Americans used prescriptions from 1988 to 1994, the report said.

Pharmacy trade groups said pharmacists may be overburdened to make up the shortage when the Medicare benefit plan starts in 2006.

The federal program, which will pay for senior citizens’ prescription drugs, also will pay pharmacists to advise patients on prescription use.

Some advocacy groups for the elderly such as AARP have been monitoring the decline in health care positions such as nurses and pharmacists for the past few years with the fear that increased demand on pharmacists could slow down services.

The Department of Health and Human Services originally identified a pharmacist shortage in 2000 when it found unfilled drugstore pharmacist positions in America had risen from 2,700 in 1998 to 7,000 in 2000.

During that period, demand for health care services shot up and pharmacy schools changed degrees from five- to six-year programs with some schools delaying their graduating classes by a year, according to the most recent HHS data.

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