Pharmacist-Led Medication Therapy Management: Benefits and Challenges

Abstract

Medication therapy management (MTM) is a service that pharmacists can offer to improve patient medication therapies and ensure their safety. By actively addressing the patient’s medication therapy, pharmacists can identify medication-related problems and provide interventions that resolve them (Nuffer et al., 2019). A systematic review found that MTM improves medication adherence and patient satisfaction and provides cost savings of at least $2.30 per dollar spent on MTM; these studies utilized trained pharmacists from pharmacies or health care systems. Community pharmacies provide great access to pharmacists, and collaboration with community pharmacies in rural areas can improve access while benefiting those pharmacies professionally and financially. MTM-focused training programs for pharmacy students, dentists, and nurse practitioners are growing by encouraging collaboration and areas of growth beyond the APS. Pharmacists can offer MTM services through prospective and retrospective drug utilization evaluations. The former occurs at the point of care exclusively in response to a specific patient needs, while the latter can be performed post hoc for a population.