How a State Measures Up: Ambulatory Care Pharmacists’ Perception of Practice Management Systems for Comprehensive Medication Management in Utah

Abstract

Comprehensive medication management (CMM) is a patient-centered standard of care that ensures a patient’s medications are optimized. The CMM Practice Management Assessment Tool (PMAT) is a tool to assess areas of CMM practice management. The purpose of this project was to assess the state of CMM practice management based on clinical pharmacist perception for two health systems in the state of Utah, and to identify areas of excellence and/or improvement utilizing a novel method for PMAT analysis. The PMAT was distributed to all primary care-focused ambulatory care pharmacists employed by University of Utah Health (U of U Health) and Intermountain Healthcare (Intermountain). Ordinal responses were assigned to three possible categories of CMM support (High, Indifferent, and Low). Ten surveys were completed from U of U Health, and nine were completed from Intermountain. Thirty-two of the 86 survey questions resulted in a high level of support, and 25 questions resulted in a low level of support from the majority of respondents. Statistically significant differences between the institutions were found for 18 questions. The utilization of the PMAT within two Utah health systems highlighted areas of excellence and improvement and demonstrates a unique method for analysis of PMAT results.

Keywords

• comprehensive medications management
• practice management
• ambulatory care
• primary care
• clinical pharmacy