What is Medication Therapy Management (MTM)? •

A range of services provided to individual patients to optimize therapeutic outcomes (help patients get the most benefit from their medications) and detect and prevent costly medication

• Medication therapy review (MTR) 
• Personal medication record (PMR) 
• Medication-related action plan (MAP) 
• Intervention and/or referral 
• Documentation and follow-up 

Healthcare doesn’t need another acronym, so what’s important to take away from the list above is that MTM makes sure that patients have the right medications for their health conditions and that they’re getting the maximum benefits of prescribed medications. MTM also detects and prevents costly problems such as adverse drug events (ADEs), which cost our healthcare system billions each year in preventable care.  

While anyone taking medication could benefit from an MTM program, the biggest benefit lies with patients taking multiple medications for chronic conditions. These patients are often of a certain age and Medicare-eligible. It’s easy to see how elderly patients could benefit from the empathetic, consultative advice of a clinical pharmacist to properly manage their health. 

You might wonder, “Why can’t physicians counsel patients on the medications they are prescribing?” Consider a patient who has been prescribed multiple medications across multiple care delivery sites. Perhaps some medications were prescribed in the primary care physician’s office, some in the emergency room, and some in an urgent care setting. Because all these medications have been prescribed by different physicians for different reasons, it’s challenging for one physician to counsel the patient on all of them. Yet, that does not mean the patient doesn’t deserve the care and attention.  

Patients with multiple chronic conditions often have several specialists to help them manage their health – perhaps a cardiologist for high blood pressure, a gastroenterologist for irritable bowel syndrome, and a rheumatologist for an autoimmune disorder. Shouldn’t patients have a medication specialist focused solely on ensuring maximum safety and benefit of their medications? 

Pharmacists are healthcare’s foremost medication experts. They’ve completed numerous years of education, training, and residency to fortify their expertise and understanding of how medications affect the body and one another. It’s a logical next step that a clinical pharmacist is the missing link to providing the highest possible quality of MTM services, especially to complex patients with chronic conditions