DES MOINES, Iowa — The National MTM Advisory Board has released its definition of a key pharmacist professional service, the Comprehensive Medication Review (CMR).
The board, comprised of payer and health care provider representatives — including pharmacies — from the medication therapy management (MTM) industry, said Thursday that the CMR has become a focus of MTM programs in recent years, due in part to Medicare reporting requirements and regulations.
Formed in 2010, the National MTM Advisory Board meets regularly to discuss and provide direction within the MTM industry. Outcomes Pharmaceutical Health Care, a Des Moines-based provider of MTM services, furnishes administrative support to the board.
"It is our goal as a board not to create a new definition but rather to update and publicize an industry-standard definition," Winston Wong, associate vice president of pharmacy management for CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, said in a statement. "As increased emphasis is placed on the Comprehensive Medication Review service, we seek to ensure and retain the quality-improvement intent of the CMR. We wish to avoid the CMR becoming a ‘check the box’ obligation. The CMR, if approached by payers and providers as we have defined it, will make the service an effective tool to improve the clinical impact of medication therapy and enhance outcomes."
The board’s definition of a Comprehensive Medication Review is as follows:
"The Comprehensive Medication Review (CMR) is a systematic process of collecting patient-specific information, assessing medication therapies to identify medication-related problems, developing a prioritized list of medication-related problems, and creating a plan to resolve them with the patient, caregiver and/or prescriber. A CMR is an interactive person-to-person consultation conducted between the patient and/or caregiver and the pharmacist and is designed to improve patients’ knowledge of their prescription, over-the-counter (OTC) medications, herbal therapies and dietary supplements, identify and address problems or concerns that patients may have, and empower patients to self-manage their medications and their health condition(s)."
According to the board, the definition builds on one put forth in the Core Elements of an MTM Service, a model created by the American Pharmacists Association and the National Association of Chain Drug Stores Foundation.
Chain drug retail members of the National MTM Advisory Board include Mark Gregory, vice president of pharmacy and government relations at Kerr Drug; Anthony Provenzano, director of clinical programs at Supervalu; and Jay Nadas, director of retail clinical pharmacy programs at Walgreens.
