Introduction

I agree with @JTurple. Creating a new care plan (or modifying an existing one) in isolation of an accurate BPMH (e.g. actual medication use) has little value. What's the point of increasing a patient's dose (e.g. as per care plan), if the medication is not dispensed or taken by the patient.

Conceptually, 'patient compliance' needs to be documented to evaluate the impact of any care plan. For physical activity, it may be an exercise log; for drug therapy, it needs to start with the BPMH (which is different than a drug list attached to a Rx receipt).

In a world where therapeutic substitutions are as common as brand substitutions, Rx history from a physician's 'intended' care plan is inadequate to monitor and evaluate drug therapy effectively.

If not with the BPMH, what is the suggestion to document the patient's medication use?

How can we do a care plan without knowing what a patient is actually taking (the BPMH)? To get to better medication management as a health care system, we need to be all working from a common understanding (patients and health care professionals alike) of each patient's medication use.

Hi Allison,

Dennis, ARI here. John Shaske sent me your invitation to join this forum to see if it could be of any use. Our position relating to the area would be to scrap the BPMH, do a proper care plan, and enable its distribution to the patient and their physician(s). Is that 1 suggestion
or 3?

Hi Monica – welcome to the group. Do you have one item Medication Management, from either the hospital or community setting, that you would like to see improved?

Hi
I'm Monica and I'm a pharmacist with a background in both community and hospital and have recently started a program at McMaster in Health Information Management.

Hello – I am one of the leaders for the Medication Management community. I’m excited to see we already have a few members in this group. I would like to start the conversation in this group by having everyone share a little bit of information about themselves – in particular, what their current role is and what information they are hoping to gain by being part of this group.

I’ll go first -
I completed my Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy at the University of British Columbia. After graduating, I worked as a Practice Consultant for Pharmasave Pacific, running health clinics and seminars for several Pharmasave pharmacies in the Okanagan. I then went on to complete the Industrial Pharmacy Residency Program at the University of Toronto with a focus on marketing and health economics at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals.

Following my residency, I held a position with Shoppers Drug Mart Corporate in Toronto in the pharmacy systems department, making enhancements to the pharmacy dispensary system and planning for the implementation of electronic health records. I then went on to work as the clinical services manager at Network Healthcare in Vancouver and later as a consultant for Intelliware Development Inc. in Toronto.

I am currently working at uniPHARM Wholesale drugs in Richmond BC, as the Manager of Pharmacy Services and Medicine Centre Pharmacies. I am also the Vice President of the BC Pharmacy Association Board of Directors.

I have seen technology change drastically over the years, however, for some reason we are still struggling to find a way for health care professional to share important patient information with each other.

I would love to hear everyone’s thoughts on their biggest challenges in Medication Management and what they would like to see improved. As well, please share a little bit about yourself.