Improving Adherence in Diabetes and Chronic Disease

Josh Benner, PharmD, ScD, President and Founder of RxAnti, discusses a new program designed to help improve medication adherence through a better engagement of healthcare providers. In 3 steps, Dr Benner explains that they first flag members who are at risk of stopping their medications, they help health plans create a plan of member outreach, and lastly, they educate the providers, doctors, and pharmacists on how to their patients effectively manage their own medications.

“These providers today have economic and workflow barriers,” Dr Benner says of the challenges in jumpstarting a program such as this. “They are focused on a lot of stuff besides whether the patient takes the medicine once they leave the office, and making it their job is the first step, and that means paying them.”

“Their practices are being bought, and sold, and consolidated. Hospitals are out on the prowl, health plans are trying to buy them, and now they are also suddenly accountable for all of these costs of care and quality measures, most of which are not medication adherence, by the way,” Dr Benner notes.

Dr Benner’s program improves adherence to medication by implementing checklists and resources and benchmarks and progress reports to ensure that the physicians are in fact paying closer attention to the patient’s medication acceptance and use.

“We have just scratched the surface of what this concept is capable of,” Dr Benner adds.