Inaugural Align Summit Draws National Audience
The University of Minnesota College of Pharmacy and the Center for Leading Healthcare Change designed and hosted the inaugural Align Summit: Advancing Provider-Health Plan Partnerships for Optimizing Medication Outcomes earlier this fall. The summit brought together a diverse group of national stakeholders to 1) share best practices in health plan/pharmacist provider partnerships, 2) explore strategies that build collaboration and investment between health plans and pharmacist providers, 3) highlight the benefits of a regional focus on health plan/provider partnership development, and 4) inspire the formation of communities of practice around regional health plan/pharmacist provider partnerships.
With more than 130 attendees, representing 26 states across the country, participants represented health plans, medication management service providers, academic institutions, national/state professional organizations, health system leadership, pharmaceutical industry, and health IT. The event underscored the value of coming together to exchange insights and experiences, and uncovered shared challenges within this community. Participants were encouraged to draw lessons from each other's experiences. Successful implementation requires effective innovations such as consistent and high-quality comprehensive medication management (CMM) services, effective implementation such as a learning and action community or coaching, and enabling contexts such as sustainable payment models for the service, all resulting in improved health of patients and communities along with reduced care costs.
Participants departed the summit after declaring their personal commitments to action. Seventy-eight percent acknowledged in the post-summit survey that they have taken the action step to which they had committed
The college and the CLHC have prepared this summary and recap of the 2023 Align Summit: Advancing Provider-Health Plan Partnerships for Optimizing Medication outcomes.