What Higher Medication Adherence Means to Your Bottom Line

For those involved in healthcare, medication adherence continues to be the salient issue dominating the industry. While PBM’s, healthcare providers, insurance companies and patients all are interested in finding solutions to drive higher prescription medication adherence, the ability to engage in distinct programs to drive adherence can lower healthcare costs for all involved.

According to the New England Healthcare Institute, non-compliance to prescription medication is estimated to cost $290 million a year, with anticipations that the number will continue to rise as the United States population continues to age. For those with chronic diseases, the increase in medication non-compliance will also result in increases in emergency room visits and other related costs that can be averted with higher medication adherence rates.

As indicated by pharma.org, better health outcomes for all patients, but especially patients with chronic conditions, can be possible with a greater emphasis on medication adherence. These could include:

Preventing Hospitalizations: Poor medication adherence is associated with increased hospitalizations, nursing home admissions, and physician visits. For instance, research demonstrates that patients who did not consistently take their diabetes medicine were 2.5 times more likely to be hospitalized than were patients who took their medicine as directed more than 80 percent of the time.

Preventing Disease: Non-adherent patients were 7 percent, 13 percent and 42 percent more likely to develop coronary heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, and chronic heart failure, respectively, over three years than were patients who took antihypertension medicine as directed.

Preventing Adverse Events: Providing counseling to patients to clarify their medication regimen following hospital discharge can dramatically reduce the likelihood of adverse drug events.

Health plans are in a state of rapid evolution, facing unprecedented financial losses in the personal health insurance exchange market while being incentivized to deliver measurably higher care quality. By 2020, projections indicate that health care spending will account for 20 percent of the US GDP, with close to 30 percent of the dollars spent in the US health care system being identified as wasteful. As more personalized and current messaging between customers, health care providers and insurers grows, the increase in medication adherence alone could potentially save billions in health care costs.

The ongoing discussion of “member engagement” needs to move from just “talk” to a credible “walk” when it comes to health plans influencing their members to choose healthcare resources that increase the quality of care while reducing the overall cost of care. To help assist healthcare organizations, RxEOB has created a whitepaper entitled “Personalized Messaging Deliver Better Care Quality and Lower Costs” that can be downloaded free of charge.

In addition to the whitepaper recently created, RxEOB also offers a number of member engagement and reporting products, as well as products that assist PBM’s, insurance companies and healthcare providers with workflow and web service delivery to lower  costs associated with prescription non-adherence in patients.

RxEOB works with a number of healthcare organizations to increase prescription medication adherence to lower overall healthcare costs and to drive better patient healthcare outcomes. To learn more about how RxEOB can assist your healthcare organization to lower medication adherence costs, please contact us at 888-648-0989 ext. 226, or email us at info@rxeob.com