OutcomesMTM "24/7 MTM" Concept Featured in Pharmacy Today MTM Profile

14-year-old company leverages pharmacist skills to improve health care around the clock.

WEST DES MOINES, Iowa--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Having appeared initially on the other side of pharmacy counters or in front of crowds of health care forum attendees, the faces of Medication Therapy Management (MTM) pioneer, OutcomesMTM™, appear on the cover of this month’s issue of Pharmacy Today.

“If they’re willing to invest health plan dollars in MTM services when they’re not required to, it’s because they’re seeing a return on it.”

The journal features OutcomesMTM CEO Tom Halterman and COO Patty Kumbera―and the OutcomesMTM “24/7 business model”―that the two, among many others, have built over the last 14 years. Today, OutcomesMTM connects a network of more than 65,000 local pharmacists with eligible patients covered by more than 40 health plans.

For Halterman and Kumbera, it all began with a desire to do more than what was expected of them early in their careers as pharmacists. Kumbera recalls numerous nights after-hours spent calling doctors to straighten out patients’ duplicated or conflicting prescriptions.

“We didn’t call it medication therapy management [MTM]. We just called it taking care of the patient,” Kumbera told Pharmacy Today. But after helping conduct a study for Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) of Iowa that showed MTM could reduce costs and improve care, Halterman and Kumbera began work on the plan that would become OutcomesMTM in 1999.

This plan was based on the idea patients need access to MTM services virtually every hour of every day, rather than just occasionally or once per year. This concept became the “24/7”, face-to-face business philosophy by which the company operates today.

The impact associated with the implementation and development of this business model include lowered costs, reduced medication risks, improved prescription and medication therapy adherence, and overall health improvement. “We work with some pretty hard-nosed CFOs,” Halterman told Pharmacy Today. “If they’re willing to invest health plan dollars in MTM services when they’re not required to, it’s because they’re seeing a return on it.”

Pharmacy Today is published by the American Pharmacists Association. The full article can be accessed online at http://bit.ly/WoeaZp.

About OutcomesMTM
OutcomesMTM is the national leader in the design, delivery and administration of Medication Therapy Management programs. The company’s service line benefits health care purchasers by delivering a cost-effective approach to advancing patient care and controlling utilization through the provision of patient-friendly, face-to-face Personal Pharmacist™ services. The company is headquartered in West Des Moines, Iowa, and may be found online at www.outcomesMTM.com.