What is the Comprehensive Medication Management Process?

Pharmaceuticals are the most common medical intervention, and their potential for both help and harm is enormous.  Ensuring that American people get the most benefit from advances in pharmacology is a critical component of improving the national health care system.¹

The 10 Steps to Achieve Comprehensive Medication Management²

1. Identify patients that have not achieved clinical goals of therapy.
2. Understand the patient’s personal medication experience/ history and preferences/beliefs.
3. Identify actual use patterns of all medications including OTCs, bioactive supplements and prescribed medications.
4. Assess each medication for appropriateness, effectiveness, safety (including drug interactions) and adherence (in that order), focusing on achievement of the clinical goals for each therapy.
5. Identify all drug-therapy problems.
6. Develop a care plan addressing recommended steps including therapeutic changes needed to achieve optimal outcomes.
7. Ensure patient agrees with and understands care plan which is communicated to the prescriber/ provider for content/ support.
8. Document all steps and current clinical status vs. goals of therapy.
9. Follow-up evaluations with the patient are critical to determine effects of changes, reassess actual outcomes, and recommend further therapeutic changes to achieve desired clinical goals/outcomes.
10. Comprehensive medication management is a reiterative process- care is coordinated with other team members and personalized goals of therapy are understood by all team members.

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¹“Pharmaceuticals: The Good and the Bad.” Informing the Future: Critical Issues in Health, Fourth Edition, Institutes of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, 2007, pp. 13–17. Accessed 4 Jan. 2018. http://nationalacademies.org/hmd/~/media/files/about%20the%20iom/itf4.pdf.

² McInnis, Terry, et al., editors. The Patient-Centered Medical Home: Integrating Comprehensive Medication Management to Optimize Patient Outcomes. 2nd ed., Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative, The Patient-Centered Medical Home: Integrating Comprehensive Medication Management to Optimize Patient Outcomes. PCPCC Medication Management Task Force collaborative document.