In his president’s report at the June midyear conference of the American Society for Automation in Pharmacy (ASAP) in Palm Beach, Fla., ASAP President Mark Sancrainte announced the recently developed ASAP standard for medication therapy management (MTM) information exchange.

Sancrainte pointed out two important reasons for developing this standard. First was to provide for a more efficient method of alerting pharmacists to MTM opportunities. The standard allows computer-to-computer notification, rather than by email or faxes.

Second was to allow pharmacies to populate the MTM program’s patient file with prescriptions that were dispensed, but not submitted to the patient’s insurance plan, such as $4 generics. In addition, any over-the-counter (OTC) and herbal products recorded on the patient’s profile could be transmitted as well. This would give the MTM program a more complete picture of the patient’s medication history.

The workgroup that was formed to develop the standard included representation from pharmacy system vendors, independent pharmacy, and chain pharmacy, as well as the two leading MTM providers, Mirixa and Outcomes Pharmaceutical Health Care.

Sancrainte also noted that two system vendors had announced plans to implement the standard and encouraged others to follow.

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