APhA Applauds The Senate For Inclusion Of Expanded Patient Access To Medication Therapy Management Services

Main Category: Pharmacy / Pharmacist
Article Date: 23 Nov 2009 - 3:00 PDT

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The American Pharmacist Association (APhA) applauds the United States Senate for including several provisions that provide patients better access to pharmacist clinical services in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (H.R. 3590). These services will improve the quality of our nation's health care system and reduce the toll of non-adherence and chronic illness.

The U.S. healthcare system currently incurs more than $177 billion annually in mostly avoidable health costs to treat adverse drug events from the inappropriate use of medications. In addition, the treatment of chronic disease costs our health system $1.3 trillion annually - about 75 cents of every healthcare dollar.

When provided the opportunity to partner with patients and prescribers, pharmacists services can help patients manage their medication therapy, have been proven to improve therapeutic outcomes, reduce medication errors and adverse drug events, enhance coordination of care, improve patients' overall quality of life, and reduce overall healthcare costs.

For these reasons, APhA strongly supports the bill's provisions that would expand and improve patient access to pharmacist clinical services, such as: pharmacist-provided medication therapy management (MTM) services as a part of the medical home model (Section 3502); patient's transitional care activities that include comprehensive medication review and management (Section 3026); a pharmacist-provided medication therapy management grant program (Section 3503); and requiring the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation to test models such as medication therapy management services (Section 3021). APhA believes that all of these provisions are necessary steps towards addressing the nation's medication use crisis and improving the quality of the nation's health care system.

"As the Senate begins debate on this bill, APhA remains focused on improving the quality of patient care and lowering health care costs," said Thomas E. Menighan, APhA Executive Vice President and CEO. We will continue to work to retain patient access to MTM and other important pharmacist-provided clinical services in the bill to help to achieve these goals."

By working collaboratively with other health care providers, pharmacists help patients better understand their medications and how to get the full benefit of their medication therapy. APhA looks forward to continuing to work with policymakers to ensure that patients have access to medications and pharmacists services.

Source
American Pharmacists Association

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