MTM Marketing Symposium

Nate and I had a busy but short week due to PD4 class meeting and University Holiday! We attended "Marketing MTM Services," a seminar held at the University of Minnesota College of Pharmacy and hosted by the UPlan University insurance benefit. The seminar covered new information specific to UPlan, covering topics such as changes to the Prior Authorization process via Prime Therapeutics, services and benefits of using Fairview Specialty Pharmacy and ensuring quality MTM services via the MTM Peer Advisory Panel.  During the afternoon session we had the opportunity to hear from Dr. Rajiv Vaidyanathan, marketing professor from the Labovitz School of Business and Economics, University of Minnesota Duluth. Dr. Rajiv discussed marketing concepts and strategies to advance the practice of Medication Therapy Management and reach a broader patient base. He focused on the idea of sustainable competitive advantage, asking the question, 'What can you do better than your competitors that they cannot copy?' (and that consumers care about?). This question is the foundation for MTM-- Pharmacists are the drug experts! Dr. Rajiv also presented current MTM practitioners with a set of questions to work through (after the session) which allows them to better define their market segment, which consumers they want to target and how they plan to position themselves. The afternoon session of the conference also allowed for experience sharing by current practitioners, discussing what tactics have been successful in recruiting new patients (and what has failed!). Look for further information and lessons learned from the Marketing MTM Services Seminar in the next issue of the MPhA Journal!


Additionally, as I mentioned in my last blog post, I am working on updating the MPhA website! If you have comments, suggestions or edits you would like to see to the website--please contact me!



Gina E. Rozinka

PharmD Candidate Class of 2011
University of Minnesota
College of Pharmacy
Rozi0007@umn.edu