MTM Delivered to Senior Living Community
Pharm2Home take Medication Therapy Management to Senior Living Community
Most older Americans who are around 70 or above can probably remember when “house calls” were still a thing in the healthcare industry.
The practice began to wane in the 1960s, but Touro’s Pharm2Home program is piloting a path for a version of this service to return.
Residents of Fairfield’s Parkway Plaza, a senior independent living community, got a small experience of what Pharm2Home has to offer when the program paid a recent visit to the community.
The program’s director, Dr. Clipper Young, said Pharm2Home was able to perform medication therapy management (MTM) for twelve residents, which provided them with a review of their prescriptions, over-the-counter medications, and herbal supplements as well as urged them to bring the identified problems associated with their daily medications to their primary care providers.
The visits are also an important way for Pharm2Home to assess the general health of the residents, as the Community Health Arm of Pharm2Home aims to integrate MTM services with the services that MOBEC (Mobile Diabetes Education Center) has been offering to our Solano County residents.
“Throughout the sessions, we interviewed the residents about their lifestyles and their understanding of their disease states and medications. We also focused on medication adherence and addressed problems associated with medication taking,” Dr Young said. “For this particular day's MTM sessions, we cried with them, and we laughed with them. It was quite touching for several residents' sessions.”
The residents seemed quite eager to take advantage of the service, with more residents expressing interest in the review than the Pharm2Home team had time for. The team has already scheduled a pair of additional visits to serve as many residents as are interested.
Dr. Young is hopeful to use this experience as a framework for delivering the same service to other communities of older Americans.
“We are hoping that by conducting events like this for a few more times, we will be able to have a well-developed system/process so that we can duplicate wherever we go,” Dr. Young said.
Parkway Plaza’s Mary Moore praised the relationship with Pharm2Home.
“Reducing medication and making sure seniors are educated on how to appropriately administer their insulin and properly use their glucose monitor is instrumental in minimizing hospitalizations and saving lives,” she said.