APhA White Paper Focuses on the Past, Present, and Future of MTM

The American Pharmacists Association (APhA) has published a new white paper focusing on positioning and integrating medication therapy management. The authors believe that the MTM concept is becoming more developed and that some aspects of MTM have become established within the organizations that are providing and paying for these programs.

Analysis also revealed that a need exists to better integrate MTM between organizations and patients serviced, between partnering organizations and between collaborating practitioners (peer-to-peer relationships).

The white paper—which was written by Jon C. Schommer, William R. Doucette, Kathleen A. Johnson, and Lourdes G. Planas—is published in the Journal of the American Pharmacists Association.

The goal of the paper was to summarize findings from MTM “environmental scans” conducted from 2007 through 2010, interpret findings from the environmental scans using insights gained from the Future of MTM Roundtable convened in October 2010, and propose ideas for future positioning and integrating of MTM programs in the US health care system.

The authors found that “MTM is becoming more developed and that some aspects of MTM have become established within the organizations that are providing and paying for these programs. However, the findings also revealed that a need exists to better integrate MTM between organizations and patients serviced (business-to-consumer relationships), between partnering organizations (business-to-business relationships), and between collaborating practitioners (peer-to-peer relationships).”

These findings indicate that a “channel of distribution” is emerging in which organizational relationships and cost efficiencies will be key considerations in the near future. The authors propose that “applying (1) customer portfolio management and (2) transaction cost economics would help improve positioning and integrating MTM into the US health care system.”