Shaping Health Care Policy and Pharmacy’s Future at AMCP Nexus: Susan Cantrell

The Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP) Nexus 2025 conference promises to unite health care leaders at a pivotal moment, offering in-depth analysis of pressing policy changes, future trends in pharmacy care, and actionable strategies to enhance patient access, affordability, and outcomes, says Susan Cantrell, CEO of AMCP.

This transcript has been lightly edited; captions were auto-generated.

Transcript

What are you personally most excited about for this year’s Nexus conference?

The thing that excites me the most about the upcoming Nexus 2025 conference is really the fact that we're bringing together leading health care decision-makers who are really shaping the future of prescription drug access and affordability at such a pivotal time. The definition of the word 'nexus' is the core, or the center that brings the various parts together, and I think that's really relevant for this year's meeting.

Another thing I'm looking forward to is just before the meeting, we will be releasing our annual access, affordability, and outcomes report. That report offers insights into some of today's most pressing health care topics, such as benefit design, specialty pharmaceuticals, and medication adherence. That report will also highlight emerging trends in pharmacy care, such as the role of AI [artificial intelligence] and precision medicine. [I'm] really looking forward to that.

We've got a great keynote speaker for the meeting, former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, who will reflect on the evolving health care policy landscape and its impact on managed care pharmacy. Of course, this is the year that we're offering our first-ever pharmacy policy summit to be held on October 27. That's a first for us, and we'll be bringing together AMCP members, patient advocacy organizations, and leading health policy experts to discuss the many critical topics impacting health policy in today's environment. And then, of course, throughout the few days of the meeting, we have over 30 continuing education sessions on a variety of topics, formulary development, value-based care, innovative contracting methodologies, pipeline tracking, and so many other issues. There's a lot to look forward to at this year's Nexus.

As nearly 3000 leaders convene at Nexus, what role do you see AMCP playing in helping members translate policy changes into actionable strategies that improve patient access, affordability, and outcomes?

A really important part of what AMCP tries to do is translate policy changes into actionable strategies for our members and other stakeholders. We really try to equip our members to join us in addressing critical health policy issues and improving health outcomes, access, and affordability for their patients. That is why we're releasing our 2025 AAO [Access, Affordability, and Outcomes] report at Nexus, to illustrate the relationship between patient adherence and health outcomes and ultimately help insurers, policymakers, and others continue to implement strategies that promote accessible, cost-effective care.

Throughout the year, even beyond our 2 national meetings, AMCP works to provide our members with the tools and insights they need to stay informed. We're in a rapidly evolving landscape right now, where new policies come out every day that seem to shape our practice. Well, we need to help our members stay on top of that, and that has been a big focus. But we also want to engage our members in the process of supporting initiatives such as the Access to Prescription Digital Therapeutics Act that we've been supporting for quite some time and the Ensuring Community Access to Pharmacist Services Act (ECAPS), for example, and other areas of legislation and regulation that really impact our ability to serve patients. Those are the types of things that we try to do to support our members in this rapidly evolving environment that we're in right now.