WILLINGNESS TO PAY FOR PHARMACIST’S MEDICATION THERAPY MANAGEMENT (MTM) SERVICES: DISCRETE CHOICE EXPERIMENT

Abstract

Medication therapy management (MTM) service by pharmacist was one strategy aiming at reducing drug related problems. Several studies had illustrated the effectiveness of MTM service including increase adherence, improve the quality of medication regimens, detect and prevent drug-related problems and also medical cost saving were demonstrated. Currently, voluntary MTM service in Thailand was rare due to limitation of time, workload, and also compensation. This study aimed to identify MTM service attributes and estimated willingness to pay using discrete choice experiment valued by society. The study results indicated that service setting, service provider, service duration, frequency of service and service fee were important attributes of MTM service. The MTM service which provided at patients’ home by vary pharmacist with 60 minutes service duration, 2 weeks follow up and service fee was 600 THB obtained the lowest utility. While, the highest utility model was MTM service which provided at drugstore by regular pharmacist with 20 minutes service duration, 10 weeks follow up and service fee was 150 THB. Respondents were willing to pay 495.86 THB to trade lowest utility MTM service model for highest utility model This study illustrated that society valued MTM service. The attributes obtained from the study could be used to improve current MTM service and adjust attributes to match with patients’ characteristics. Moreover, pharmacists should explore more important attributes to develop sustainable MTM services.