Medication Management

Medication Management

At Access East Care Management, medication management is our clinical pharmacists’ main focus, involving reviews of medication reconciliations (“med recs”) completed by our care managers, as well as performing comprehensive medication reviews (CMRs).

Medication reconciliation is the comparison of what a patient has been prescribed (in physicians’ orders, including admission, transfer, or discharge orders, and frequently from different providers) to what that patient is actually taking (noting drug name, dosage, frequency, and how the drug is administered). Med recs are often an essential component in a patient’s health-improvement, ensuring that correct medication needs are being met.

The CMR is a more intensive evaluation, with the pharmacist also consulting patient medical records, including recent lab-work.

These reviews help determine if any medication issues need to be communicated to a patient’s primary-care provider (PCP)/medical home, with the ultimate goal of improving the overall quality of patient care, and producing a corresponding reduction in preventable emergency department visits and hospital readmissions.

Medication management is performed both in transitional care and for chronic-care clients:

    • Our pharmacists and care managers compare a patient’s pharmacy-claims data, progress notes, lab data, medical history, and other applicable information, with the goal of determining:
        • Potential drug interactions
        • Health declines brought on by a patient not adhering to a medication regimen
        • Issues arising from drug costs or the use of multiple pharmacies
    • In a transitional care scenario, medication management focuses on identifying discrepancies or updates to medication lists following a patient’s discharge from an acute-care facility. (Also following a hospital discharge, PCPs are supplied with a copy of a patient’s medication reconciliation, for use during the patient’s follow-up visit.)
    • Chronic-care patients are referred for medication management by their care managers, their PCPs/medical homes, or a pharmacist directly connected to the medical home.