Medication Therapy Management in Community Pharmacy Practice

摘要

Community pharmacis ts are often thefirst point of contact for patients withhealth-related and medication questions.The 2007 Wilson Rx Pharmacy CustomerSatisfaction Survey reports that the averagepharmacy customer visits their pharmacyan average of two to three times permonth, which is greater than ten times thenumber of times they visit their primarycare physician and greater than 15 timesmore often than they visit a specialist physicianin a year. Community pharmacistsare faced with the challenge of identifyingand resolving medication-related problemsfor prescription, nonprescription,herbal, and dietary supplements on a dailybasis. In an often fast-paced, busy environmentsuch as a community pharmacy,it is critical for pharmacists to be affordedface-to-face, uninterrupted, quality timewith their patients. However, broad scalereimbursement mechanisms for such serviceswere lacking until the establishmentof The Medicare Modernization Act of2003. Effective January 1 2006, this actestablished a prescription drug benefit for25 million Medicare beneficiaries. In addition,it afforded pharmacists a platformfor reimbursement for the identificationand resolution of medication-relatedproblems, entitled Medication TherapyManagement (MTM)