The pharmacy industry is aware of the facts. Each year, prescription non-adherence in the U.S. costs more than $230 billion dollars annually, contributes to 10 percent of all hospitalizations and results in 125,000 deaths1. Apparently, C. Everett Koop was right when he said, “Drugs don’t work in patients who don’t take them”.
The dilemma remains: How do pharmacies contribute to increasing patient adherence in an efficient manner that does not send costs through the roof? Pharmacies have relied heavily on automated patient communications, including inbound IVR, outbound notifications, web/mobile applications, MedSync and scheduling solutions for immunizations and screenings. However, employing multiple vendors can cause confusion for patients, additional work for pharmacy staff and the potential for violations of the FCC TCPA and FTC TSR regulations.
MarkeTouch Media is the only United States vendor in the industry that provides holistic patient communication services and without utilizing third party vendors or outsourced programmers. The benefits of using MarkeTouch’s RxTouch suite of services include:
- Consistent scripting, voices and interfaces for communicating with patients.
- A single portal, allowing pharmacy staff to view all patient communication and reporting through one URL.
- A single vendor, reducing security concerns related to data transmissions.
In addition to providing consistent messaging through automation, pharmacies are increasing personal communication between staff and patients. In its annual report card, NCPA determined that “the leading indicator of whether a patient will adhere to their medication is their personal relationship with the pharmacist or pharmacy staff.” MarkeTouch’s unique service, Pharmacist Connect, allows pharmacy staff to increase patient communication without affecting workflow. A pharmacy staff member logs in to the portal (the same, single portal used for automated messaging); views patient history, medications, adherence information and potential interventions; and makes calls without dialing the phone. The service has proven to increase patient adherence to their medication regimens; results include Return to Stock reduced by 20 percent over traditional automation, increasing PDC scores by 30 percent and more than 50 percent enrollment into MedSync.
It’s clear that a single source for all patient communications increases pharmacy revenue, patient adherence and satisfaction.
1. Annals of Internal Medicine, December 4, 2012 Vol 157 No. 11 Ann Intern Med. 2012;157(11):785-795. doi:10.7326/0003-4819-157-11-201212040-00538
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