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Kylee A Funk, Deborah L Pestka, Todd D Sorensen, Provider work life, comprehensive medication management, and the quadruple aim, American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy, Volume 78, Issue 23, 1 December 2021, Pages 2180–2183, https://doi.org/10.1093/ajhp/zxab241
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Every year, the United States incurs more than $500 billion in avoidable costs due to medication-related morbidity and mortality.1 Therefore, there is a critical need for new strategies in healthcare to mitigate these costs; provision of comprehensive medication management (CMM) by pharmacists is one solution with evidence of positive impact. CMM is a service generally provided by pharmacists where each patient’s medications are individually assessed to evaluate whether each one is indicated, effective for the given condition, safe, and being taken as intended (ie, the patient takes medications as intended). If the pharmacist identifies any medication therapy problems during this process, they develop an individualized care plan in collaboration with the patient and the rest of the care team and follow up with the patient to ensure that they are meeting their desired goals.2
When organizations look to implement CMM, we have observed that administrators often begin their evaluation of the opportunity to integrate CMM services from purely a cost/revenue analysis. Unfortunately, in today’s environment, we know of very few health systems that are able to fully cost justify a pharmacist providing CMM in primary care based on revenue alone. With increasing emphasis on value-based contracting and organization-level performance incentives, revenue from clinical pharmacy services will likely remain an incomplete strategy for justifying investment in CMM services.
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