Medication therapy management in community pharmacy practice.

Ginger Lemay, PharmD, CDOE  CommunIty pharmaCIStS are often the first point of contact for patients with health-related and medication questions. The 2007 Wilson Rx Pharmacy Customer Satisfaction Survey reports that the average pharmacy customer visits their pharmacy an average of two to three times per month, which is greater than ten times the number of times they visit their primary care physician and greater than 15 times more often than they visit a specialist physician in a year. Community pharmacists are faced with the challenge of identifying and resolving medication-related problems for prescription, nonprescription, herbal, and dietary supplements on a daily basis. In an often fast-paced, busy environment such as a community pharmacy, it is critical for pharmacists to be afforded face-to-face, uninterrupted, quality time with their patients. However, broad scale reimbursement mechanisms for such services were lacking until the establishment of The Medicare Modernization Act of 2003. Effective January 1 2006, this act established a prescription drug benefit for 25 million Medicare beneficiaries. In addition, it afforded pharmacists a platform for reimbursement for the identification and resolution of medication-related problems, entitled Medication Therapy Management (MTM).