Two studies conducted separately in Asheville, North Carolina, to observe the long-term clinical, humanistic, and economic outcomes of a community-based medication therapy management for asthma, and hypertension and dyslipidemia have been described here.
Bunting and Cranor observed 207 adult patients with asthma for 5 years to evaluate various outcomes of a community-based medication therapy management (MTM) program. They performed a quasi-experimental, longitudinal pre and post interventional study. The participants included patients with asthma covered by twp self insured health plans, one professional educator at Mission Hospital, 18 certificate trained community and hospital pharmacists. The range of interventions included education for patients; initial check up and long-term follow-up visits by pharmacists including consultations, monitoring, and recommendations to concerned physicians. The outcome was estimated through factors like forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1), asthma symptoms and related emergency hospital visits.
The results concluded that education and long-term MTM caused significant improvements for the patients and reduction of asthma related costs.
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