Well, not my picture, and not on the cover of the Rolling Stone. But it is on the cover of Pharmacy Today, and it is a picture of long-time Foundation grantee June Simmons, MSW, the CEO of Partners in Care Foundation.

June earned this acknowledgement with her 15-year commitment to improving prescribing for older adults. In the mid-1990s, when June was the leader of the Visiting Nurse Association of Los Angeles, her home health agency (as well as the Visiting Nurse Service of New York) served as a site in a clinical trial of an intervention to reduce problematic prescribing for older adults being discharged from hospitals to home care.

In the intervention model, home health nurses compared the medication and clinical information they are obliged to collect from their patients to the Beers Criteria (another long-lasting Foundation investment). A consulting pharmacist reviewed the many potentially inappropriate medications and, when needed, called them to the attention of prescribing physicians for review and correction. Then as now, researchers found high rates of potentially inappropriate prescriptions, but the intervention succeeded in reducing errors.

However, a successful clinical trial does not lead to practice change without champions to spread the news and lead the way. June was willing to go that extra mile. First, she led a dissemination and technical assistance effort aimed at home health agencies. And more recently, under another Foundation grant, she led a dissemination effort focused on the Medicaid waiver programs providing support at home to the very needy “dual eligibles,” those people old or disabled enough to qualify for Medicare and with incomes and assets low enough to qualify for Medicaid. Under this grant June and her team have helped 25 agencies around the country adopt the model and created an information technology and regulatory policy infrastructure for dramatic expansion.

I was recently out in Los Angeles at the Partners in Care Foundation doing a final site visit to the project, now called HomeMeds. It struck me how long and hard the Foundation has been working on improving the quality of prescribing for older Americans. Not only is it a core issue (a pillar) in Eric Coleman’s Care Transitions Intervention and a key topic in the VNSNY’s CHAMP program, but it has also been part of the foundation’s work long before my time. With foundation support, in the 1980s Dr. Jerry Avorn of Harvard produced a series of “counter detailing” advertisements intended to overcome claims of pharmaceutical sales reps (“detailers”).

We know a lot about what would make for better care, and we’ve know it for a long time. With the Medicare Part D program in place and its “doughnut hole” shrinking, taxpayers and beneficiaries are paying for medications. More data than ever about prescription practices should be easily available. This is clearly an area where we could do better. Do others have the will to follow through?