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 The Academy of
Managed Care
Pharmacy is a professional
association of individual pharmacists who use the
tools and techniques of managed care in the practice of
pharmacy. At the heart of every member is commitment
to a simple goal: Provision of the best available pharmaceutical
care for patients.
As an organization, the Academy strives to achieve
its mission of empowering its members to serve society
by providing opportunities for continued professional
growth, by advancing individual and collective knowledge.
Throughout the year, AMCP provides conferences,
online learning access, peer-reviewed literature through
its Journal of Managed Care Pharmacy, and leadership
development seminars. Each is designed with the goal of
advancing professional knowledge, improving the design
and delivery of pharmacy benefits, and ultimately, patient
satisfaction and health outcomes.
Patients who receive the correct drug in the correct
way achieve better outcomes, improving quality
of life, the bedrock of our Vision—managed care pharmacy
improving health care for all. Equally important to
prescribing the right drug, however, is being able to
provide adequate access to as many patients as possible.
The Academy has been doggedly pursuing strategies
to help providers of drug coverage achieve that goal as
well, by working in ground-breaking disciplines such as
pharmacoeconomics, a branch of pharmacy that seeks
to determine the true value of a drug-not product cost,
but effectiveness in improving overall health outcomes of
patient populations.
The focus of the Academy has been to create scientifically
designed methodologies for making medical
choices as intelligently as current knowledge will allow,
supported by evidence-based clinical studies. Some of
the Academy’s most successful products to date are
AMCP’s Format for Formulary Submissions and the AMCP Framework for Quality Drug Therapy. The Format is a
standardized methodology for assessing drugs scientifically,
based on the value they provide. Widely adopted
by numerous health plans, governmental agencies such
as the Department of Defense and leading pharmacy
benefit management companies, the Format has become
a de facto industry standard. Managed care organizations
employing the Format cover approximately half of all
pharmacy care beneficiaries.
The AMCP Framework for Quality Drug Therapy was developed over a period of years with the input
and review of over 100 stakeholders, including both
providers and users of care. It is essentially a reliable, adaptable and scalable methodology for applying quality
improvement initiatives to patient care focused on the
patient, not the process. There are about 250 individual
components of the Framework that can be applied to
any health care setting, from which a practitioner may
choose the most applicable. A series of evaluative exercises
are supplied, through which the practitioner develops
an action plan for quality improvement, measurement
and evaluation.
Two other significant contributions to managed care
practice include AMCP’s Guide to Pharmaceutical Payment
Methods and Sound Medication Therapy Management
Programs, V2.0. The Guide is a comprehensive, factual
description and analysis of alternative drug payment
methods and payment systems, including a review of
the history, current application, potential future utility,
impact on managed care pharmacy, other stakeholders
in the pharmaceutical marketplace and the overall health
care delivery system. It includes a glossary of payment
terms, tables showing which payers and settings utilize
which methods, payment flowcharts to illustrate how
the money flows with each of the payment systems and
examples of payment calculations. Downloadable in a
summary and a comprehensive format from the AMCP
website, it is accompanied by a web-based interactive
resource library.
In 2005, spurred by the Medicare Modernization
Act’s (MMA’s) inclusion of the medication therapy
management (MTM) requirement, AMCP and other
organizations recognized a lack of clear definition of
what specific elements would constitute a sound MTM
program. To fill that gap, AMCP assembled a variety of
stakeholder organizations that served as a working group
to build a consensus document that would define those
elements. The Academy issued the consensus document Sound Medication Therapy Management Programs in April
2006. Then, in late 2006, AMCP undertook a project
to validate the content of that document in the marketplace.
AMCP coordinated the project components and
the work of the project’s advisory panel. The National
Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) performed
the project’s field work under contract to the Academy.
The Academy believes the final product, Version 2.0, will
stimulate the public policy discussion, aid in the evolution
of sound MTM programs, enhance patient care and
encourage the efficient use of health care resources
dedicated to these programs.
These and all other AMCP publications, including
the Journal, can be found on the AMCP website, www.amcp.org. |
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