This is not the ideal situation for patients or for the pharmacy’s bottom line. When allowing a PBM to provide telephonic MTM services to your pharmacy’s patients you are “giving up your power” as a retail pharmacist.
To give you an example, think of the TIPs intended to identify and recommend that patients should be switched to a 90 day supply.
The 90 day supply may or may not be in the patient’s best interest. It is, however, most definitely NOT in the best interest of the pharmacy in terms of reimbursement rates. Many pharmacy’s have completely eliminated 90 day fills in favor of monthly Med-Sync programs in order to preserve reimbursement rates.
Consultant pharmacists can help independent community pharmacies implement and grow sustainable MTM programs. As an “MTM implementation” consultant pharmacist, your services would include preparing, training and implementing MTM services in a community pharmacy setting. This could be a good option to offer in smaller-volume pharmacies that only want a program set up. Your services will provide them with training and a plan for managing the MTM program themselves.
For implementation of a new MTM program, you could give an estimated quote based on the hours that you will spend setting them up, trained and getting as many CMRs completed as you can within the agreed-upon timeline. This number is based on an approximately one-month implementation timeline. If you estimate you would be able to complete staff training and 20 patient CMRs during the one-month implementation, you would give a quote of $3,000.
Ex.) Estimate 20 patients x $75/patient + (20 hours of staff training x $75/hr) = ~$3,000
Contracting a new pharmacy with the two major MTM platforms would mean using the community pharmacy’s NABP. OutcomesMTM and Mirixa are the largest platforms and the first ones to focus on when building your MTM pgram. They are the easiest to use as most pharmacies may already contracted with them.
There is more information about staff training, workflow improvement and marketing your implementation and consulting business in the E-Course available at Pharmapreneur Academy.
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