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Practice Transformation

Many primary care practices are struggling to keep their doors open—and those that do stay open are rethinking their business models. Physicians and health policy experts say the pandemic is accelerating efforts to restructure primary care and put it on a firmer financial footing. “Primary care doctors now know how vulnerable they are, in ways they didn’t before,” said Rebecca Etz, a researcher at the Larry A. Green Center, an advocacy group for primary care doctors. In particular, the pandemic has energized the push to replace fee-for-service with value-based care. (Fortune)
CMM offers reduced costs, improves access to care, provides better care and enhances provider work life. These results are outlined in “The Outcomes of Implementing and Integrating Comprehensive Medication Management in Team-Based Care: A Review of the Evidence on Quality, Access and Costs,” updated in June 2020. The evidence document was prepared by GTMRx workgroup members, M. Shawn McFarland, PharmD, FCCP, BCACP, national clinical pharmacy practice program manager, clinical practice integration and model advancement, clinical pharmacy practice office, pharmacy benefits management services, Veterans Health Administration; and Marcia Buck, PharmD, FCCP, FPPAG, BCPPS, director, clinical practice advancement, American College of Clinical Pharmacy. (GTMRx Institute)

Evidence & Innovation

More health care providers are creating telehealth leadership roles in their C-suites, a trend that will likely accelerate because of the pandemic, Modern Healthcare reports. “As more and more encounters are delivered via telehealth, the importance of having an executive who is driving that part of the operation is just more and more critical,” says Michael Brookshire, a partner at consulting firm Bain & Co. He advises against making it a C-suite position. Rather, designate a telehealth lead as you would appoint a president of a single hospital. They would take ownership of one area, but report to a senior executive. (Modern Healthcare*)
More than 80% of representatives of health systems have instituted genomic data management strategies or plan to do so within the next couple of years, according to a new report by the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s Center for Connected Medicine. In addition, 90% said they were providing—or planning to provide—genomic or genetic testing. The report also identified the top three factors considered likely to expand genetic and genomic testing and precision medicine programs: evidence of clinical effectiveness, evidence of cost effectiveness and reimbursement (MedCity Newsreport)
How many pharmacy intervention studies have based their statistical significance on what really matters to the patient? Before a study is carried out, it is important to define what is an important difference between patient groups. This is often not done correctly. In this podcast, Anna McGlothlin, PhD, from Berry Consultants discusses how to assess the minimal clinically important difference in research studies. (JAMA Network podcast)

Policy Solutions

U.S. researchers will create a strain of the coronavirus that could be used in possible human challenge experiments, according to Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. (Washington Post)
Opioid prescriptions written for Medicare Part D beneficiaries continues to drop, STAT News reports. In 2019, 26% of Medicare Part D beneficiaries received at least one prescription opioid. In 2018, 29% of beneficiaries received opioid prescriptions through Part D. The decline has gone on for four straight years. (STAT News)

In Case You Missed It!

GTMRx workgroup update:
The Payment and Policy Solutions Workgroup is happy to welcome Kaiser members Polly Webster, JD, MPH, counsel, government relations to the Payment Methodologies Subgroup and Rebecca Cupp, RPh, vice president, pharmacy controls to the Telehealth Delivery of CMM subgroup. In addition, Polly and Rebecca have been hard at work on the Health IT to Support Optimized Medication Use and Precision Medicine Workgroups. The Institute is excited to receive additional insight on the health plan perspective from Kaiser.
GTMRx workgroup update:
Jonathan Watanabe, Pharm.D., M.S., Ph.D. BCGP (associate director & founding associate dean of pharmacy assessment and quality) and Jan Hirsch, BS Pharm, Ph.D. (director & founding dean), both from the School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences at UC Irvine, spoke to the Employer Toolkit Taskforce on “Want you need to know to get started with a pilot in your community.” Jon and Jan discussed things to know before you get started, how to approach your area’s school of pharmacy, how to describe goals and intended outcomes and who else needs to be at the community table.
GTMRx member and partner update:
Kaiser Permanente recently joined the GTMRx Institute as an Executive Member along with the Teachers’ Retirement System of the State of Kentucky and Biotheranostics who have both joined as Strategic Partners of the Institute. You can learn more about our members here.
GTMRx Blueprint for Change Available Now!
New report calls for medication management reform with guidance for how medications are managed. 
On July 22, 2020, “The GTMRx Blueprint for Change,” a robust report based on eight months of multi-stakeholder input, was released. The report outlines steps for reform, including an evidence-based process of care – Comprehensive Medication Management (CMM) – that personalizes the approach and leads to better care, reduced costs and improved patient satisfaction and provider work life.
The GTMRx Blueprint for Change includes recommendations to engage everyone involved in patient care—from physicians to clinical pharmacists, health plan sponsors, providers, consumer groups and policymakers. The GTMRx Four Pillars of Medication Management Reform include revamping:
    • How we practice
    • How we pay
    • How we use diagnostics
    • How we integrate technology
  You can download the report here.
Hear more about using a risk stratification process for patient identification to select individuals that benefit most from comprehensive medication management services intended to produce value-based outcomes: economic, humanistic and clinical. There will also be discussion about why it is vital for regulators, care providers and payers to work together to establish standards and best practices to ensure access to clinical information, to include diagnostics, at the point of care. This webinar will also showcase a case example of risk stratification in action with the Teachers Retirement System in Kentucky.
Molly Ekstrand, BPharm, BCACP, AE-C, Consultant with North Star Medication Optimization, LLC, along with Jane Gilbert, CPA, Director of Retiree Health Care, Teachers Retirement System of the State of Kentucky, will offer an overview of how health care IT infrastructure can efficiently enable health systems, payers and purchasers of health care to identify groups of patients who will most likely benefit from comprehensive medication management services.
Find more information here.
Hosted by the GTMRx Institute’s executive director and co-founder, Katherine H. Capps, Voices of Change features leaders who have knowledge, experience and ideas to solve this urgent need to get the medications right. The most recent episode features Amanda Brummel, PharmD, BCACP, vice president, Clinical Ambulatory Pharmacy Services Fairview Pharmacy Services. Past guests include Orsula V. Knowlton, PharmD, MBA, president and chief marketing & new business development officer of Tabula Rasa HealthCare, Inc., Anand Parekh, MD, chief medical advisor, Bipartisan Policy Center and GTMRx President Paul Grundy, MD, chief transformation officer, Innovaccer.
Listen here.
Donate to the GTMRx Foundation through AmazonSmile!
AmazonSmile is an easy way for 0.5% of your qualified purchases go to the GTMRx Foundation at no cost to you. And signing up is simple—go to smile.amazon.com and select “Get the Medications Right Foundation” as your charity of choice. If you prefer to directly donate instead, you can do so here.
Adding the foundation on AmazonSmile will help us continue to provide no cost educational webinars, issue briefs, weekly news briefs and promote the need for transformation of our current system of medication use through social media campaigns.

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