Does My Pharmacy Really Need Cultural Competency Training?

As a reminder, pharmacies are now required, as part of their NCPDP profile, to address if the pharmacy maintains evidence of cultural competency training. With the current staffing environment, all pharmacies want to know: do I really need to complete cultural competency training? Beyond NCPDP credentialing, here’s some additional consideration:

  • There are numerous federal laws and regulations related to discrimination and cultural competence – pharmacies must take reasonable steps to provide equal access to care across all patient populations.
    • Pharmacy staff cannot be expected to provide equivalent services if they don’t know the legal requirements or your pharmacy’s expectations. This alone makes staff training an absolute must.
  • Prior to NCPDP requesting Cultural Competency training status, PBMs were requiring pharmacies to attest directly. Now they’re pulling data from NCPDP without having you attest – make sure your NCPDP profile is up to date!
    • Humana still requires a direct attestation and additional training in states where they administer Medicaid Managed Care.

PAAS National® understands community pharmacies are short on time and resources. We’ve condensed more than 3 hours’ worth of training down to under an hour. The training is practical, and pragmatic – written by community pharmacists for the independent practice setting. PAAS’ Cultural Competency Training helps provide pharmacies a means to meet federal requirements, plus a certificate of completion, easily retrievable via the PAAS Member Portal.

As nondiscrimination in healthcare programs become increasingly important (and litigious), pharmacies need to position themselves to be culturally competent healthcare providers. This is further evidenced by the Department of Health & Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR) looking to revise the implementation guidelines of Section 1557 in addition to sanctions for pharmacies not capable to serve patients based on individual needs.

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