The Doctor Shortage Is Getting Worse. Your Pharmacist Can Help.

InnovationHealthcareThe Doctor Shortage Is Getting Worse. Your Pharmacist Can Help.BySeth Joseph,Contributor.Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about the intersection of health care, technology and policyFollow AuthorMay 13, 2026, 08:00am EDTPinback button for the American Red Cross, 1945. (Photo via Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images).Getty ImagesIn 1937, the first blood bank in the United States opened at Cook County Hospital in Chicago. In its first year, it facilitated 1,354 blood transfusions — an achievement given that storage was unreliable, donors were recruited only after a crisis, and trust in the system was thin. Less than a decade later, something had changed. By an order of magnitude.The American Red Cross had collected 13.3 million pints of blood from 6.7 million donors, operating across 35 fixed centers and 63 mobile units. Blood transfusion had been transformed from an improvised, heroic act into standard clinical infrastructure.The Red Cross didn’t invent blood or donors. It solved a coordination problem — standardizing collection, storage, and distribution among many parties until participation became routine rather than heroic.Community pharmacy in the United States is now confronted with an opportunity - and a challenge - with an uncomfortably similar shape. Pharmacists’ clinical capability exists. The patients are already in the building. The legal permission to deliver and bill for clinical services is expanding rapidly. What doesn’t exist — what has never fully existed — is the payment and system infrastructure that allows all of those elements to function and grow at scale. That gap is both the defining challenge facing pharmacy today and, as a growing body of research makes clear, the most important opportunity available to close it.MORE FOR YOUWhy This Matters Far Beyond PharmacyThe stakes of getting this right extend well beyond the pharmacy industry’s economics. The United States is in the early...