Role of Pharmacists in the Primary Care Medical Home (PCMH)

Across the United States efforts are underway to incorporate the patient-centered medical home model into both for-profit and not-for-profit primary care settings. Implementing this health care home model can be challenging, especially in the current economic state where demands for medical care are high, but resources are scarce. This presentation reports on organizational, structural, and professional characteristics of a multidisciplinary health team that effectively addresses safe medication use, ensures patients' access to medications, delivers critical information on safe use, as well as assuring timely access to current medication information for providers. Lessons learned through implementing this model, which has developed through a partnership forged between a college of pharmacy and a community clinic, will be highlighted. The presentation reports on practice-based strategies that illuminate the role of pharmacists in team-based care settings within a safety net clinic where a complex patient population with low health literacy is served. The process of successful integration of a pharmacist within a multidisciplinary health care team and ways to utilize medication therapy management (MTM) and expertise on drug information is demonstrated, using case studies. A framework is described to assist in creating a structure that maximizes the mutual benefit of each profession to provide effective medical care.