The Pharmacy Business Advice Blog

Robert Bowles, RPh helps patient at Big C Pharmacy in Thomaston, GA become almost fully adherent with the help of My Dose Alert and MTM

12/30/2009 

"In November, I had the opportunity to provide MTM to a Medicare Part D recipient. During the time that I spent with this patient, I quickly realized that this patient was grossly non-compliant with taking their medication. I contacted the patient’s physician and determined that the patient was actually supposed to be taking 19 medications. She was non-compliant with 15 of these medications.

I realized that it would probably take multiple approaches to achieve compliance with this patient. The foundation of my approach was to enroll the patient into the My Dose Alert Program. Secondly, I thought about how was this patient going to keep up with 19 bottles of medicine. I determined that the patient had three daily administration times. We set up a zip-lock bag for each of these times – one was at 8 AM, one was at 3:30 PM and the last bag was for 4 PM. Then, we set up My Dose Alert to call her at each of these times. The last part of my approach was to enroll here in our E-Z Med Synchronization Program so that I could more effectively monitor her compliance.

The results were literally amazing. After 29 days of this approach, she was within 3 days of being totally compliant. Certainly this becomes a win-win-win-win approach for everyone --- the patient is healthier, the physician is not frustrated by having to deal with a non-compliant patient, the healthcare system ultimately saves unnecessary medical costs reflecting the value of a pharmacist, and the pharmacy realized a monthly gross revenue increase from $450 to $1200 in taking care of this patient.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I was paid $350 for completing the CMR (compliant medication review) while addressing and obtaining results in reaching compliance in this patient."

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My Dose Alert is included with the NCPA-PDS Marketing Solution Center, a web-based communication tool that allows pharmacies to build stronger relationships with their customers through education-based marketing.

To learn more about My Dose Alert or find out how to offer the service, pharmacies can visit www.pharmacyowners.com/mydosealert

 Do you have a MSC success story you'd like to share with the community? Please email msc@pharmacy-owners.com. If it's a good one, we'll send you a Flip Video camera to record a testimonial for us to share. If you record your testimonial and email it back to us within 7 days, you can keep the video camera as our gift.