If you are preparing for the 2023 BCMTMS Exam, you’ll want to pay attention to the information I provide below.

I was spot on in my assessment a couple of years ago. In 2019-2020, the BCMTMS exam pass rates were in the 80% range. I previously posted about the changes that took place in 2021 and how the exam would be more difficult with lower pass rates. We now have data on the BCMTMS exam changes that happened a few years ago. It has a significantly lower pass rate than it did a few years ago. The cumulative pass rate in 2021 was about 62%! The 2022 pass rate thus far is approximately 72% with the final session results still pending at the time of this post. The expanded content outline starting in 2021 is the likely culprit for the lower pass rates.

How To Choose Between BCMTMS and BCACP?

I get this question several times per year. What is the big difference between the BCMTMS and BCACP certifications and why would I choose one versus the other? Both emphasize clinical pharmacy principles. The primary difference in my experience is the location of where the pharmacist practices. The BCACP credential is much more focused on performing clinical services within a healthcare system (i.e. primary care clinic). The BCMTMS credential is much more focused on the billing of MTM services within or associated with community and retail pharmacies.

As a pharmacist looking to change jobs, which one should I pick? My answer: it depends upon what you want to do. If you are comfortable performing MTM and providing clinical services within a community/retail pharmacy space, then I would go for the BCMTMS certification. If you are within a healthcare system, I would lean towards BCACP.

Does an employer look negatively on either certification? I have seen job postings that mention either certification as being “recommended” for an ideal candidate. Here’s something I see on many clinical job postings “Board Certification or equivalent certification specific to clinical area highly encouraged”. My bottom line on this is that the overwhelming majority of employers aren’t going to care about whether you have BCMTMS or BCACP. They just want you to have a certification if you are applying for a clinical position.

Advice For 2023 BCMTMS Exam Participants

My first piece of advice is to review the content outline IN DEPTH. Many candidates will simply focus on drug therapy and guidelines in MTM care. This is a big mistake. Pharmacotherapy is ONLY 62% of the exam. This means that 76 questions (200 total questions) will be non-pharmacotherapy questions! In my estimation, this is the top reason (other than not studying enough) that candidates fail the BCMTMS exam. We’ve done the tedious work of going through the content outline line by line and ensuring that this content is our downloadable PDFs and/or video review course.

Doing practice questions/practice exams remains a high priority. While I believe it is very important for the BPS examinations, I would say this is even MORE important for the BCMTMS exam. Why? The BCMTMS exam is 200 questions and you only get 4 hours to take the exam. You have to get through 50 questions every 60 minutes and that doesn’t include any buffer time if you get stuck or want to review something. Target 1 question per minute when preparing for the BCMTMS exam in 2023.

Don’t Ignore Regulatory and Statistics

A big chunk of the exam involves numerous regulatory and statistics-based terminology. Do not overlook these sections in the content outline. Literature evaluation, study designs, MTM billing, Medicare, star ratings, patient barriers, SBAR, and SOAP notes are all examples of items that show up on the content outline that many pharmacists might overlook.

10 Questions on Pharmacogenomics

Pharmacogenomics is the second biggest change over previous years’ exams. This change actually took place in 2020, but now it is officially listed on the content outline with a percentage. You can anticipate approximately 10 questions in relation to pharmacogenomics. On a 200-question exam, this isn’t an astronomical amount, but getting several of these wrong could hurt your chances of passing. It is definitely a topic area I would spend some time studying, especially if you don’t have a solid background in this area.

I hope this helps you prepare to pass the 2023 BCMTMS Exam! As always, feel free to reach out to me at [email protected] as I have followed pharmacist board certification for the last 10+ years!

Study Materials for the BCMTMS Exam can be found here.

Here are some of the testimonials from our BCMTMS Study Materials.

“Hi Eric, I just wanted to let you know that I took your BCMTMS review course and I just found out I passed the exam. I worked your program every day and it certainly made the difference in my becoming certified, and I learned a lot as well. Thanks for the excellent course and I would recommend it to anyone trying to become certified”. – Jeff Pearlroth

“First-class work Eric! I recently took the BCMTMS exam. I purchased your BCMTMS study material. I have been a retail pharmacist for 20 years. Your program taught me how to once again think clinically. The BCMTMS exam is no pushover. It is lengthy and can be quite confounding. Do not underestimate the level of difficulty of this examination. I listened to your audio lectures several hours each day while driving. I passed on the first attempt. Good work and thank you for helping many. I highly recommend purchasing Eric’s material if you are interested in taking the BCMTMS examination. His program lays a profound understanding of clinical knowledge and unique clinical pearls, some of which were included in the exam. Thank you, Eric, for your good work. This will be used to help many of our patients.” – Michael Fulghum

“Hi, I just wanted to thank you for sharing your review on the BCMTMS exam. I literally watched every video and read the review 2 nights before and passed the exam with flying colors! Again thank you for your time and hard work. Very much appreciated!” – Israel Santiago

“I passed the exam this month and the result far surpassed the minimum passing score. I credit this to the organization of material and the quiz questions within your study guide.
Thanks again.” – Raquel Macfarlane

“I took about a month ago… I PASSED! I think, based on the scoring system, I did pretty well too. I wanted to say thank you very much for your study guide. Extremely helpful for someone like me who hadn’t taken a test like this in 15 years and had no idea where to start.” – Bryan Coehrs

“I just received my results and I passed my BCMTMS Exam! Your gracious time and effort to put together those banks of questions that actually help us is appreciated. I honestly stayed up reading almost all of them and reading the rationale and learning new information. I will apply this Information to my practice and MTM work.” – Keishon T.