At the start of rotation week 4, Julie and I attended an AWARxE marketing meeting with HealthPartners to discuss what it means for them to become a sponsor. AWARxE initially came about from a father whose teenage son had died from an overdose from prescription medications. He approached his legislator and has strongly advocated in starting a program that can prevent future situations like his. Before the meeting, I had only thought of the program as preventing prescription drug abuse from medications such as pain meds, anxiolytics, etc. but it also seems to be a promotion for MTM services! The program looks at helping patients better understand their medications so they don’t abuse, overuse, or underuse ANY type of medication in ANY age group.
While at HealthPartners, we were informed they recently posted a new MTM video which can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2d1ZWJyesXg. I think this specific video is an exceptionally great patient education tool because it gives real life examples of drug therapy problems that patients can relate to and understand instead of just explaining what a drug therapy problem is. For example, “This patient was on two meds that are very similar from different doctors, which was dangerous so we stopped one and the patient feels much better.”
Tuesday was my “try to figure out MTM at Ridgeview” day. I met with the pharmacy director and billing department out at Ridgeview Medical Center which felt more like a roundtable discussion of confusion. The billing department wants to pursue MTM contracts this spring – leaving time for me to graduate and get licensed and all. Documentation and Billing still seems a blur, but I thought maybe this would become clear at my afternoon meeting with Medication Management Systems (MMS). It was SO refreshing to talk to people that know exactly how to bill for MTM and explain the millions of benefits MTM has to offer! Next steps are trying to get Ridgeview and MMS to meet. At this point, I am going to push to include MTM as an employee benefit at Ridgeview.
Another issue I investigated during the week was regarding the “Cancer drug repository act”. Don’t know what this is? You can check it out here: http://www.phcybrd.state.mn.us/forms/cdrguidelines.pdf. Basically it is a law that allows pharmacies to “reuse” expensive cancer drugs. After talking with the MN Board of Pharmacy, no pharmacies have used this to date. Why not? Pharmacies cannot guarantee the storage or contamination of any products that have left the pharmacy, and thus feel it is too risky to dispense them again. Also, pharmacies can’t charge for the re-dispensed product, so there is no incentive. However, I talked with Pharmacists Mutual and participation would not increase one’s liability insurance since the law includes immunity for participating pharmacies as long as the guidelines are followed.
On Thursday, Julie and I attended the MPSA meeting at the College of Pharmacy to listen to a presentation from the Immunization Action Coalition. The presentation included discussions about the flawed arguments of those who are anti-immunizations. I learned that the National Vaccine Information Center, a common website referred to by patients, is an anti-immunization group! Beware…….the name is deceiving!
Friday was the long awaited MTM symposium! I was able to sit in on roundtable discussions including an “Update on Part D requirements” by Tom Albers (MMS) and “Documentation Systems” by Stacy Steber (Goodrich). After the roundtables, I learned about a new free documentation program available: Medication Pathfinder. Several practitioners recommended using this program to me as a new practitioner. Others questioned the cost-effectiveness of some other systems, such as Assurance. If anyone has input, please comment! Unfortunately, even after talking with many of the “brightest bulbs” in MTM, I still feel confused about billing! Why do I feel like I am reinventing the wheel?
This week I am looking into the possibility of contracting with Outcomes so I can provide MTM to Medica and Humana patients at Ridgeview. I need to find out if they only contract with retail pharmacies. They have an “Alternative location contract” as a consultant pharmacist, but I am not sure if this would include a pharmacist at a doctor’s office/clinic.
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