AMCP Nexus 2025: Advancing Health Policy and Patient Outcomes Together

As health care policy evolves at breakneck speed, the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP) Nexus 2025 conference, held October 27-30 in National Harbor, Maryland, serves as a forum where pharmacy professionals, policy makers, and advocates unite.

This transcript was lightly edited; captions were auto-generated.

Transcript

What makes AMCP Nexus such a crucial conference for health care professionals to attend this year?

Susan Cantrell, CEO of AMCP: 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. So that is why we're releasing our 2025 AAO [Access, Affordability, and Outcomes] report at Nexus, really to illustrate the relationship between patient adherence and health outcomes and ultimately help insurers, policy makers, 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. 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.

Brigid Groves, PharmD, MS, vice president, professional affairs, American Pharmacists Association: I've heard just nothing but positive feedback from colleagues who have attended this meeting in the past, and I'm really appreciative of the opportunity to have a chance to engage with my colleagues, ensuring that pharmacy has a seat at the table in accessing medications that are covered, that are ensuring that they're being accessible, and that we're bringing the right things to the right patients at the right time. I think it's going to be a great chance to network and to again hear that evidence and how we can use that to generate coverage and availability and accessibility for our patients.

Kimberly Westrich, MA, chief strategy officer, National Pharmaceutical Council: My favorite part of attending AMCP Nexus is connecting and networking, and this year there are multiple opportunities to do that, because there's a policy summit the day before Nexus starts that I'm looking forward to the cutting-edge discussions that are going to happen there on what's happening in real time in the policy space, which, let's face it, is changing every day.

I'm really excited, and I know I say this every year, but I'm so excited for the student and new practitioners reception, connecting with new practitioners, connecting with students, and learning about their vision and plan and their research areas of interest is always rewarding for me, and then connecting with folks throughout the conference and hearing the new information in the sessions and the keynotes—it's just one of my favorite conferences, both Nexus and AMCP annual in the spring, and I can't wait to connect, to network, to share what's on my mind, and to hear what's on other people's minds.