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Pharmacy Programs

Improve Medication Adherence with Listening and Understanding

We all know the importance of medication adherence and how that alone can have more of an impact on health outcomes than the specific treatment itself. It is critical that we focus on helping patients understand the importance of taking their medications, as prescribed, to maximize the potential benefits for their corresponding chronic disease to improve their overall quality of life.

Starting the conversation now on taking medications, as prescribed, will set up your patients for success throughout the year and help you achieve patient care goals. Some key points to remember regarding medication adherence:

  • According to the CDC and WHO, about 50% of medications for chronic diseases are not taken as prescribed.
  • Lack of adherence causes higher rates of hospital admissions, suboptimal health outcomes, increased morbidity and mortality, and increased healthcare costs.

Looking at these key points, what can you do to help? The most important thing you can do is to listen to patients and truly understand the barriers they are having. This will help develop more impactful medication adherence initiatives and improve overall patient outcomes. From there, making changes like converting medications for chronic diseases from 30 to 90 days will result in a significant boost in medication adherence across the board.

Utilizing tools like RxEffect can help you prioritize your most critical patients and streamline your conversations to get to the root cause of medication non-adherence. This will enable you to address the medication adherence barrier and close several gaps in care in one sitting. If you haven’t yet, check into RxEffect to see how it can help you achieve your goals. As always, our team is here to help you in any way we can!

TIPS

Listening

Ask questions. You can’t help close barriers if you don’t know what they are. Are they taking all their medications? If not, why?

  • How often do you miss one?
  • Financial concerns
  • Forgetfulness
  • Side effects
  • Don’t feel they need them

Understanding

Address any barriers:

  • Educate/explain side effects
  • Provide written instructions
  • Brainstorm solutions to scheduling issues
  • Share resources for financial assistance
  • Utilize health literacy tools to help you, help them.
  • Reduce the complexity of the drug regimen

RxEffect Testimonials

The RxEffect platform is a valuable tool that assists you in identifying patients that are non-adherent to their diabetes, hypertension, and cholesterol medications, as well as assisting with identifying varying gaps in care for this specific Medicare population. We've had several provider groups utilize this tool frequently, resulting in improved medication adherence leading to better Medicare STAR ratings and increased success in varying HEDIS measures, as well as improved quality of life for our members! Below are a few examples from provider groups on how they utilize the platform and best practices that have helped them fit these opportunities into workflow.

Decorative