Pharmacists Prepared to Implement MEdication Therapy Management

Every single day, patients are admitted to the hospital with a laundry list of medications taken at home. The primary care physician is nowhere to be found in the hospital, and the hospital physician has to take on the job of looking at the patient's home medications and deciding what to do. What usually happens is the hospital prescriber or specialist checks to continue all home medications without a second thought. Why? It's the idea that the patient has presented for an acute process that needs to be managed, and assessing a medication taken for UTI suppression at home isn't their job. Or is it?

This “continue without a second look” approach causes errors that can affect days admitted to the hospital, medication interactions between home and hospital medications, and duplication in therapy. Pharmacists in hospitals attempt to intervene, but with the current setups of distribution pharmacy versus clinical pharmacy, this caveat can slip through the cracks without proper billing/payment, so that hospitals can justify another full-time equivalent solely for this purpose.  

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http://www.pharmacytimes.com/contributor/beth-lofgren-pharmd-bcps/2015/03/pharmacists-prepared-to-implement-mtm