Medication Management Systems, LLC

Description

Although Medication Management Systems was incorporated formally in April 2006, the story of the company begins more than 25 years ago. This story explains why MMS is different–why when you establish a relationship with MMS, you are taking on a practice, teaching and research tradition with a very sound foundation in the area of medication management. We would like to share that story with you. As early as 1977, Linda Strand (now Vice President of Professional Services at MMS) began asking the question: What do pharmacists contribute that is unique and of value to the care of the patient? No one seemed to have a good answer to that question. Yet, it seemed logical that pharmacists would have to manage medications better than other patient care providers if there was to be a lasting, meaningful role for the pharmacist. When her research indicated that a rational, systematic, and comprehensive decision making process for drug therapy decisions did not exist, she set out to define one. Dr. Strand needed the help of a very successful clinician in order to successfully define the decision making process for drug therapy decisions. She found this in Dr. Robert Cipolle (now founder and board member of MMS). The two of them created the logical thought process that is now known as the Pharmacotherapy Workup. As this thought process is a problem solving process, it became necessary to define a taxonomy for all the possible drug therapy problems so practitioners would know what they are looking for in practice. This required a significant amount of research and resulted in the seven categories of drug therapy problems that has become the standard way of classifying drug therapy problems around the world. It became clear that the Pharmacotherapy Workup and the taxonomy of drug therapy problems did not “fit” into traditional pharmacy practice. These tools were meant to be used on a patient specific basis creating the necessity for a new, primary care, patient-centered practice for the pharmacist. This required expertise from the area of medicine and Dr. Peter Morley, a medical anthropologist, who had worked in the fields of medicine and nursing, was invited to join the research endeavors of Drs. Strand and Cipolle. Dr. Doug Hepler then joined efforts to provide the conceptual framework for pharmaceutical care practice. As a result, the term “pharmaceutical care” and portions of a practice were developed; however, a comprehensive patient care practice of pharmaceutical care was yet to be developed. In 1992, Drs. Strand, Cipolle and Morley received funding to define this practice. They worked with 54 pharmacists in 20 different practice sites in the Minnesota Pharmaceutical Care Project to accomplish this goal. This project resulted in the definition of the practice of pharmaceutical care, the development of a computerized documentation system (which is the beginning of the Assurance System now available at MMS), a reimbursement system based on the Resource Based Relative Value System, a practitioner training program and clinical and economic outcomes from 13,000 patient encounters.

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