As pharmacy practice evolves, establishing pharmacists as recognized, reimbursable healthcare providers requires a multi-pronged approach. While ongoing advocacy and legislative change remain essential to expand provider status and billing opportunities across health plans, having your credentials in order is a critical prerequisite to take advantage of those opportunities when they open up.
To help colleges and schools get ahead of this piece of the puzzle, AACP officially endorses credentialing for all student pharmacists, residents/fellows, and clinical faculty/preceptors. To support this vital shift, AACP recommends the use of Pharmacy Profiles. This is a centralized, profession-specific platform designed to streamline credential management, empower student professional identity, and prepare our workforce for sustainable patient care delivery. Explore the core concepts, strategic importance, and immediate implementation steps below.
What: The Core Concepts
Endorsement
AACP endorses credentialing of student pharmacists, pharmacist residents/fellow, and pharmacist faculty/preceptors practicing in clinical settings by all Colleges and Schools of Pharmacy.
- The Position: By making this endorsement, AACP recognizes that each college or school of pharmacy will contribute to a practice-ready workforce and demonstrate to their students, residents/fellows, and pharmacy faculty/preceptors the importance of credentialing in the overall objective of being recognized as legitimate providers. While the credentialing process does not guarantee any specific recognition, it remains a crucial component in the overall recognition of pharmacists as providers of quality healthcare. The pharmacy Academy has a responsibility to create a critical mass of pharmacists and prospective pharmacists that are credentialed and ready to build and contribute to the future of pharmacy practice.
Recommendation
Furthermore, we recommend that Colleges and Schools of Pharmacy utilize Pharmacy Profiles as the tool to credential the above groups.
- The Application: Pharmacy Profiles is designed as the system to specifically collect pharmacist professional information necessary for credentialing of the pharmacist with health plans for the purpose of enabling the billing of services when contracted with any given health plan. It has the ability to serve as a strategic launchpad for professional advancement, allowing colleges and schools of pharmacy to validate and manage professional information across all three cohorts (i.e., student pharmacists, pharmacist residents/fellows, and pharmacy faculty/preceptors practicing in clinical settings). Specifically for first professional year student pharmacists at colleges/schools of pharmacy, enrolling within Pharmacy Profiles will establish a “passport for practice” for students that can be added to as they gather accomplishments over the course of the curriculum.
Why: Strengthen Our Profession as Patient Care Providers
Credentialing
- Profession-wide Impact of Credentialing: Health plans require all providers to be known to their health plan, or credentialed, to be able to participate in the delivery of health care and submit claims to be paid for to the health plan itself. Pharmacist credentialing by healthcare payers remains a relatively uncommon practice, but essential to be able to grow the number of pharmacists participating in health plan contracts for the provision of patient care services in any setting. It is critical that trainees and pharmacists understand the role of credentialing in healthcare delivery. It is also essential that pharmacist faculty engaged in the delivery of services to patients in the ambulatory care environment (community, primary and specialty care setting) serve as role models for this element of managing a sustainable practice.
- Strategic Alignment: The Joint Commission of Pharmacy Practitioners has endorsed two key documents to guide consistent practice of patient care services by pharmacists. The Pharmacists' Patient Care Process defines the process of care pharmacists apply to optimize medication therapy. The Key Elements of a Pharmacist Practice Management Ecosystem (released in January 2026) guide pharmacists in efforts to plan, evaluate and strategically grow pharmacist patient care practices. Pharmacist engagement in credentialing is one of the key elements of the practice management ecosystem that pharmacists and student pharmacists must understand to create sustainable patient care services.
Pharmacy Profiles
- A Credentialing Pathway Created for Pharmacists and Student Pharmacists: While not all pharmacist employers or health plans will rely on Pharmacy Profiles as a resource to facilitate credentialing, it is the only credentialing pathway that has been created by the profession specifically for pharmacists and affords student pharmacists to be included. The platform’s ability for students to document practice experiences, micro-credentials and other specific programs and competencies creates a tangible professional development experience that mirrors credentialing expectations that will become common in their careers.
- Breaking Down the Features:
- Pharmacy Profiles provides student pharmacists and pharmacists with a centralized platform for maintaining professional information used in credentialing and professional advancement. Depending on the individual, a profile may include licensure information, education, employment history, training, certifications, continuing pharmacy education, collaborative practice agreements, professional liability insurance status, awards, publications, and other professional information. Information from multiple primary and authoritative sources is combined with information entered or attested to by the individual, creating a professional record that can be maintained over time.
- Pharmacy Profiles can support the sharing and verification of credential information with organizations such as employers, pharmacy networks, and health plans.
- Student pharmacists can be gifted a MyProfile for free from their college/school of pharmacy, supporting early organization of credentials and readiness for internships, rotations, post-graduation applications, licensure, employment, while reinforcing professional identity. The student could then share their profile with the college/school.
- Student Value Proposition
- Organize credentials early: Keeping education, training, certifications, employment, and licensure information in one place.
- Prepare for next steps: Support readiness for internships, rotations, residency applications, licensure, and employment.
- Build professional identity: Reinforce that credential management is a core part of professional practice.
- No cost to students: Students can claim their free MyProfile - no fees ever.
How: Implementation of Pharmacy Profiles
Getting Started
Colleges and schools of pharmacy can begin by intentionally engaging student pharmacists, residents/ fellows and pharmacist faculty/preceptors to claim or establish their profile on Pharmacy Profiles and review the professional information contained within them. Faculty/preceptors can model the process by maintaining an up-to-date professional profile, while students can begin building their profiles early in the professional curriculum and add credentials, training, education, experiences, and accomplishments as they progress toward practice.
Call to Action
We invite you to...
- Consider Pharmacy Profiles as one component of broader institutional efforts to prepare graduates for an evolving health care environment in which pharmacists are increasingly expected to demonstrate and maintain verifiable professional credentials.
- Engage student pharmacists in establishing a Pharmacy Profile early in the professional curriculum, ideally prior to starting their first IPPE experience.
- Incorporate periodic updating of student profiles into professional development, co-curricular, experiential, or practice-management activities.
- Use credentialing discussions to connect professional qualifications with provider enrollment, contracting, billing, reimbursement, and sustainable pharmacist-provided patient care.
- Encourage faculty and preceptors to claim and maintain a Pharmacy Profile.
Note
AACP recognizes that Pharmacy Profiles is not the only mechanism through which pharmacists may be credentialed and that other organizations may use their own credentialing platforms, applications, or processes. The recommendation of Pharmacy Profiles is intended to provide colleges and schools of pharmacy with a pharmacy-specific mechanism for introducing learners to credential management and preparing them for future credentialing requirements, rather than to replace credentialing processes required by individual organizations or payers.