The Home Health Quality Improvement National Campaign will release its new Medication Management Best Practice Intervention Package (BPIP) next Thursday, April 28th. The goal of the Meds Management BPIP is to provide guidance on medication management to home care leaders and to provide clinicians with resources to help them assess and improve a patient’s ability to manage medications. There is an emphasis on the risks for medication adverse effects during patient care transitions.

The BPIP brings together tools, insights, and a wealth of resources to improve the evaluation and management of meds, and facilitate care coordination and interdisciplinary actions highlighted by OASIS-C. The BPIP includes 7 modules that offer something for every level- from leadership to each member of the home health interdisciplinary team- and includes helpful checklists for each discipline.
A strength of this BPIP is that it includes tracks for therapists, social workers and home health aides (particularly important as aides often know what really is happening in the home). CHAMP is prominently featured in the BPIP as a Best Practice to improve medication reconciliation and collaborative communication about medications.

I was honored to provide the Pharmacist Perspective and to be included on the technical advisory panel. From my perspective as a pharmacist involved for almost 25 years in home care medication improvement projects, the timing of this best practice could not be more opportune, given changes at the federal level such as healthcare reform legislation and OASIS-C. In particular I’m interested in the potential impact of the Medication Therapy Management in Treatment of Chronic Disease (MTM) component of the reform legislation, on increasing pharmacy collaboration with the care of patients living at home. Pharmacists have been providing various medication management services such as drug regimen review for decades in home health and other senior residential practice sites. Numerous programs implemented across the country have demonstrated the value of coordinating pharmacist MTM services with interdisciplinary teams of health care providers in various settings. Reimbursement has been a key barrier to expanding these services, particularly in home and community care settings.  The MTM provision offers the potential for pharmacists to be reimbursed for non-dispensing services in a collaborative approach to the treatment of chronic diseases.

To access the Medication Management BPIP, click on www.homehealthquality.org. The site is free of charge; however registration is required to access the BPIPs.

Please let us know what you think, and how you plan to use these tools in your own practice.

Dennee Frey, CHAMP Pharmacy Expert