5 Steps to Boost Your CMS Star Ratings

As a pharmacy owner, you want to provide an all-star customer care that improves your patients’ health and quality of life. Gone are the days when script count was your number one success measure. Starting today, your profitability will extensively depend on the quality of service you provide to your patients, and not the number of prescriptions you fill.

According to the Centers of Medicare & Medicaid, the Part D plans must provide the evidence of quality patient care by attaining at least a 3-star rating. High star ratings mean higher reimbursements and increased patient loyalty. Low ratings will result in lost reimbursements and a potential loss of CMS certification – this makes improving your quality measures now critically important.

Luckily, we have the answers! These 5 essential steps outline a road map for increasing your CMS star ratings while staying focused on motivating your team and providing excellent service to your customers.

Step 1>>> Enroll with EQuIPP today, so you can keep track of patient adherence and build customer loyalty

EQuIPP is a performance information management platform that allows pharmacies to better understand the impact on patients’ health by providing user-friendly dashboards of benchmarked performance information, based on accepted standards of quality care. This platform allows you, as a pharmacist, to measure the quality of your performance and understand how your service impacts the greater healthcare system in which you operate. If your organization has not yet engaged with EQuIPP, we strongly encourage you to sign up.

Step 2>>> Implement Synchronization to improve your work (and cash) flow

Synchronization is a system of standardized policies and procedures that coordinate refills, so they are picked up at the same time every month. According to the Thrifty White study, the average prescription is filled every 36 days. With the SyncRx program, filling every 30 days results in an extra 2.8 refills per prescription per year. For every patient that you sync, you get $740 additional revenue! Synchronization also enables moving efficiency bottlenecks to off-peak hours, allowing you to spend more time with your patients at the time that is convenient for them, which in turn opens up opportunities for repeat business. Synchronization cuts down on stress and improves your operations and business accountability.

Step 3>>> Improve adherence by joining a Medication Therapy Management Program (MTM)

As rules and regulations change and the demand for high quality patient services grows, we encourage you to focus on a patient-centered, rather than an individual product-centered process of care. MTM services encompass the assessment and evaluation of a patient’s complete medication therapy regiment, rather than focusing on an individual medication product. Joining an MTM program will give your pharmacy the necessary tools to help your patients better understand the appropriate drug use, and therefore increase adherence to medication therapy.

Step 4>>> Incorporate interventions into your practice. Show your patients that you care!

You can establish a strong and long-lasting relationship with your patients by incorporating interventions into your daily practice. Interventions add value by reducing the medication errors, rationalizing the therapy and reducing costs while providing opportunities to upsell your customers. Interventions will take your practice to the whole new level, allowing you to be perceived as a go to patient counsel and healthcare community service leader.

Step 5 >>> Use the appropriate resources to make the most out of your star ratings

• Equipp.org provides information necessary to become and EQuIPP partner
• MTM Videos educates patients and helps them stay connected with your pharmacy
• Mirixa offers clinical rules-based platform to improve member health, education and satisfaction
• OutcomesMTM links contracted plans with more than 100,000 pharmacy providers
• Pharmacy Development Services provides a step-by-step system to improve your ratings and turn ideas into results!

Curious to learn more about how synchronization can boost your quality ratings? Join us for a FREE 45-minute webinar on April 22 @ 6.30 PM EST, where PDS Member Jason Turner will present his 360-degree view of the key points, including:

• Drivers of value-driven healthcare and the role of medication-use quality in the Medicare Star Ratings program
• Pharmacy performance measure tools and the potential impact of Medicare Star Ratings
• Value of medication synchronization and impact on medication-use quality measures and more

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