In a recent blog post on Cardinal Health’s thought leadership site, Essential Insights, Cardinal Health’s medication therapy management product leader, Brad Tice, said that now is the time to fully measure return on investment (ROI) of medication therapy management (MTM).
MTM is considered mutually beneficial for payers, patients and pharmacies, but has experienced a slower-than-expected adoption rate.
"I believe that one explanation for slow MTM adoption is that the complexity of the health care system can obscure MTM's proven value," Tice said. "Timing issues, cost allocations and financial incentives are a few obstacles that impact how MTM programs are measured. Failing to measure the full impact of MTM programs is difficult to do, yet doing so is a fatal analytical error."
Tice writes that health plans, which focus on MTM’s ROI, will gain a crucial competitive advantage in the marketplace. MTM services can create instant cost savings, Tice said, but these services have the potential to create even more return in later years.
Most MTM savings happen outside the pharmacy benefit through drops in emergency room visits, fewer hospital re-admissions, improvements in how physicians are used and so on. All of these cost savings are not easy to measure, Tice said.
To read the full blog post visit cardinalhealth.com.
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