Assessing the State of Comprehensive Medication Management in a Sample of Primary Care Clinics

Abstract

Overview Comprehensive medication management (CMM) is an important tool to address medication-related morbidity and mortality and reduce health care costs. Medication therapy problems (MTPs) are a significant and costly barrier to improving patient outcomes1 and with more than half of all Americans taking at least one prescription drug,2 the need to manage and optimize patients’ medications is greater than ever. This report examines select practice and practitioner characteristics of the primary care clinics that participated in the research project, Enhancing Performance in Primary Care Medical Practice through Implementation of Comprehensive Medication Management. To be eligible to participate, sites had to have: established relationships with care team providers, a way of electronically identifying patients most in need of CMM, reporting processes in place for CMM data, read/write access in the electronic medical record, and an established CMM practice or a commitment to providing CMM. Because of these inclusion criteria, most participating clinics had CMM services in place for several years and were mature in their design and delivery of services. Site characteristics around the following areas were assessed: pharmacist and clinic demographics, delivery of pharmacy services, collaboration, billing and payment for CMM, and measuring CMM outcomes. The results of this report shed light on how CMM is being delivered in a sample of established CMM practices and therefore may provide benefit to those practitioners interested in building their own CMM practice. Article Type: Original Research