Enhancing Medication Therapy Management with Motivational Interviewing

Clinical Pharmacy Services developed and implemented a medication therapy management pilot program for a commercial managed care organization, in collaboration with Northeastern University’s School of Pharmacy.

Pharmacists in our clinical call center conducted patient outreach for this medication therapy management initiative. Using motivational interviewing techniques when calling patients with diagnoses of asthma, we learned that the reasons they didn’t take their medication were different from those that the managed care organization anticipated. Several reasons came up repeatedly:

• Insurance issues
• Management of preventable side effects of the inhalers
• Lack of clarity on the purpose of a controller inhaler, which can prevent long-term problems

With motivational interviewing, we gain a deeper understanding of each patient and have greater opportunity to enhance their health outcomes. It enables our pharmacists to determine the root causes when patients fail to adhere to prescribed pharmaceutical regimens and then help them overcome those barriers:

• Encourages patients to commit to taking medications according to their physicians’ recommendations
• Includes call backs to follow up with patients and confirm that they are taking the medications
• Reaches a target number of calls based on a patient’s risk of not taking medication
• Tracks all interventions, documenting prescribed treatments and patients’ responses to motivational interviewing

We are dedicated to educating patients on their conditions and the appropriate use of their prescribed medications — and to ensuring that our medication therapy management programs succeed.