Cardinal Health

Josh Marsh, Sr. Director of Operations, Cardinal Health

Having spent the past seven years working in a patient hub with chronic care patients, I’ve been fortunate to see how the right technology can help patients overcome these barriers and support a smoother treatment journey. Here are a few of my key learnings:

Communicate via Preferred Channels

Medication non adherence is a big challenge for patients with chronic illnesses – with as many as 50% of patients not adhering to their medications as directed. Part of the challenge is identifying how patients want to receive communications, and making sure to meet them where they are.

One channel that has been particularly helpful for medication adherence is pharmacy texting. According to a recent study, communicating reminders and refills to patients with chronic diseases over text messages increased the likelihood of medication adherence by more than 50%.

However, it’s important to note that part of the success with texting is that patients preferred it over other communication channels such as calls, message systems, websites, emails, etc. Patient communication preferences can vary deeply, specifically with different age groups of both patients and caregivers, so it’s important to ask patients what they prefer.

Despite the growth of health tech, so much of healthcare still relies on analog methods of paperwork: faxes and snail mail to be specific. As a result, patients often don’t know what the next steps are in their treatment journey – and may feel like they are being left in “limbo” while they wait for payer approvals on their prescriptions.

Giving patients a two-way communication platform that they can go to is another way we have found that helps with patient communications. With a two-way communication tool, patients not only receive the information healthcare providers are hoping to disseminate, but they also have access to their own information.

In our experience, adding information about the patient’s journey to the patient portal during re-enrollment seasons resulted in patients being 75% more likely to choose that option for reenrollment vs. an online form with no follow up information in the first two months of the roll-out.

Determine Costs of Therapy Upfront

According to the CDC, 15% of Americans have delayed filling a prescription in order to save money. In fact, drug costs are often cited as the leading cause of medication non adherence.

Cost becomes even more confusing for patients in the medical benefits space – typically used for infused therapies that are administered in a hospital or clinic -- where different but similar insurance plans can have varying costs for patients, depending on which therapy their physician prescribes. Additionally, benefits investigations can often take weeks, delaying the time to therapy for chronically and critically ill patients. Electronic benefits investigation technology can decrease this time to minutes, giving patients and doctors insight into the medication cost during the prescribing process, enabling the patient and provider to discuss options sooner.

Technology is greatly advancing the access and adherence of patients to medication, improving the quality of life for millions of Americans, but only if healthcare continues to focus on improving communication.