Blog | Calling all Innovators, Changemakers and Solutionists 

We’re only just a couple of weeks into the New Year, but we’ve hit the ground running at GTMRx as we harness the work and energy of colleagues—750 members and growing daily— who are working across health care to get the medications right. Here are two new opportunities for you to get connected and informed.

We hope to see you on Thursday, February 6 from 8:30-10:30 a.m. EST at the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) in Washington, DC when we will co-host “Get the Medications Right: Innovations in Team-Based Care.” This event marks an important milestone in the movement toward team-based, person–centered care, enabled by technology, science and medication—an approach that allows us to answer the question: Is this the right medication for this person?

Keynote presenters are Elizabeth Fowler, JD, PhD, executive vice president, programs, Commonwealth Fund and Gregory Downing, DO, PhD, founder, Innovation Horizons, LLC and co-chair, Health Datapalooza.

Susan Dentzer, MPH, senior policy fellow, Robert J. Margolis Center of Health Policy, Duke University, moderates a panel discussion with three of the most preeminent leaders in optimizing medication use: Carolyn Clancy, MD, deputy under secretary for discovery, education and affiliate networks, Veterans Health Administration; Michael Evans, RPh, vice president, Enterprise Pharmacy & chief pharmacy officer, Geisinger and Daniel Rehrauer, PharmD, senior manager, Medication Therapy Management Program, HealthPartners.

Seating is limited, so be sure to reserve your spot ASAP. If you can’t join us in person, the event will be broadcast live. You can find more details here.

Following the BPC event, we are hosting a by-invitation executive roundtable discussion with a small group of innovators, changemakers and solutionists to discuss how best to accelerate the transformation to a personalized, team-based, comprehensive approach to medication use. This meeting will inform a “Blueprint for Change” that we will release in the coming months. While this event is at capacity, newly joined Board-level and Executive Member-level organizations will be able to participate. Please contact us if you’re interested in securing a seat at the table with representatives from health technology and innovation companies, leading health care professional organizations, as well as leaders from academia and those who are delivering care and services.

In this month’s GTMRx Institute “Voices of Change” podcast, I interview two of the pharmacy profession’s most senior statesmen to share the pharmacist’s point of view on medication experts working alongside physicians, nurses and staff and how it fits into the larger evolution of the profession. As Paul Abramowitz, Pharm.D., Sc.D. (Hon), FASHP said in the interview, it is crucial “that care today is team-based and requires physicians, pharmacists, nurses and others to utilize their full expertise in order to achieve the best outcomes in drug therapy.”

Physician leaders share this view, says Paul Grundy, MD, known as the “godfather” of the patient-centered medical home and featured in last month’s podcast. “The use of medications, including their prescribing, monitoring and appropriate follow-up is essential if we are to get the best outcomes for medication therapy for all of our patients and for all Americans, and to do so, it’s essential that we deliver interprofessional care, including a pharmacist as the medication therapy specialist on that health care team.” More from Dr. Grundy here.

Also joining me for this episode is GTMRx Board Member, C. Edwin Webb, Pharm.D., MPH, who serves as the senior policy advisor to the executive director and Board of Regents of the American College of Clinical Pharmacy (ACCP)—which is the national professional and scientific society of pharmacists providing leadership in clinical pharmacy practice, research and education. Among the observations Ed shares is that “we now have 12 to 13 thousand chemical entities available for the health care team to use to help patients get better and stay well and that complexity is a real challenge for every member of the healthcare team…the prescribers, the physicians, the nurse practitioners need support in the medication use process to optimize and achieve the outcomes they want to achieve.”

I invite you to tune in and hear more about what it will take to get the medications right from the pharmacist’s perspective. Enjoy!