“I am pleased with the Supreme Court decision. The Affordable Care Act has opened the doors for innovation in health care and has advanced many new models of patient-centered, interdisciplinary care that includes pharmacists. Pharmacists have been invited (in many cases for the first time) to sit at the table with government agencies, health care plans and health systems to provide solutions to improve care and decrease overall health care costs. Some provisions in the law represents a formal recognition at the federal level that Medication Therapy Management (MTM) is a vital component of the nation’s health care reform initiatives. It is also a recognition that pharmacists as health professionals are uniquely qualified to deliver these services as members of the health care team.”

Magaly Rodriguez de Bittner, PharmD, BCPS, CDE, is a professor and chairperson of the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy's Department of Pharmacy Practice and Science. Rodriguez de Bittner practices in ambulatory care and community pharmacy practice sites, including the development, implementation and evaluation of innovative practice models in these settings. She is the Director of the Maryland P3 Program a medication therapy management program for patients with chronic diseases. She conducts research on the evaluation of the impact of these types of programs in the clinical, economic and humanistic outcomes of patients, expansion of community pharmacists’ clinical roles and overall improvement in health care delivery.

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