Medication nonadherence comes with a $290 Billion price tag. As many as 75% of Americans report having difficulty taking their medications as prescribed. When patients are nonadherent, they aren’t as healthy as they should be, which in turn results in poorer health outcomes, decreased health plan performance and lost revenue.
Just because a prescription is dispensed doesn’t mean that it’s taken as prescribed. Healthcare organizations have long struggled to increase medication adherence and choosing a trusted pharmacy partner is far from easy.
Simple methods of reviewing claims data and conducting member outreach with an impersonal call center no longer satisfies or delights your members. A new, innovative approach to conducting medication adherence interventions is needed.
With the goalposts for CMS quality measures moving further from reach, many Medicare plans are in search of a partner to improve their medication adherence and subsequent Star Ratings in:
As a company founded by pharmacists for pharmacists, we at Aspen RxHealth understand why medication adherence is so critically important. That’s why we use technological innovation to empower pharmacists to provide direct consultative care and boost Medication Adherence.
Our nationwide network of over 7,000 clinical pharmacists carries over 65 different specialty/clinical certifications. All of our pharmacists undergo continuous education and training to ensure they consistently deliver member consultations that keep people healthier and improve health outcomes:
Our elastic workforce model enables us to design and implement these condition managemand and medication adherence programs faster and more efficiently than the competition. In fact, we’re providing our clients 30% greater efficiency than traditional vendors while maintaining a CMS compliance rate of over 99%
Medication adherence is when a patient fills and uses their prescriptions according to the directions given by the prescriber. Education is a critical part of medication adherence, to ensure that patients understand the risks of nonadherence, and the benefits of taking their medications as directed.
The best way to improve medication adherence is through patient education. When patients don’t understand how their medications work or why they were prescribed in the first place, they are more likely to become nonadherent. However, when they have a strong understanding of their medication regimen and how important it is for managing their health, they are likely to remain adherent.
Medication adherence is important for one simple reason—medications don’t work if they aren’t taken properly. Especially in patients taking multiple medications to manage one or more conditions, it’s critical that all medications work in harmony with each other in a consistent manner.
As healthcare’s foremost medication experts, pharmacists are highly qualified to help patients with medication adherence related issues. Pharmacists can use their extensive knowledge and expertise to educate patients about why adherence is important and the risks of falling out of adherence. During a patient conversation, pharmacists can also detect medication issues and work with the prescribing physician to correct them, subsequently improving adherence.
The most common way to measure medication adherence is through proportion of days covered, or PDC. PDC estimates medication adherence by calculating the percentage of days in which a patient has access to their medication during a given period of time. This method is used because prescription drug claims can be analyzed to determine how much of a medication was dispensed, however, through pharmacist-led consultations, greater accuracy of medication adherence can be determined, as access to medication does not equate to patient adherence.
