Treatments: Medication Management

Overview

Medication management involves patient-centered care to optimize safe, effective and appropriate drug therapy. Care is provided through collaboration with patients and their health care teams.

Pharmacists’ Role in Medication Management

• Assess patients and their medication-related needs and identify actual or potential drug therapy problems
• Formulate and implement care plans to prevent and/or resolve drug therapy problems
• Recommend, adapt or initiate drug therapy where appropriate
• Monitor, evaluate and document patients’ response to therapy
• Collaborate and communicate with other health care providers, in partnership with patients

Purpose of Medication Management

Medication Therapy Management (MTM) is a service provided typically by pharmacists that aim to improve outcomes by helping people to better understand their health conditions and the medications used to manage them. This includes providing education on the disease state and medications used to treat the disease state, ensuring that medicines are taken correctly, looking for any side effects, and providing education on how to manage any side effects.MTM is a process that can be broken down into five steps: medication therapy review, personal medication record, medication-related action plan, intervention and or referral, and documentation and follow-up.

The medication therapy review part of MTM has the pharmacist review all of the prescribed medications, any over the counter medications, and all dietary supplements an individual is taking. This allows the pharmacist to look for any duplications or dangerous drug interactions. This service can be especially valuable for people who are older, have several chronic conditions, take multiple medications, or are seen by multiple doctors.