Contact Us

Opening hours: Monday to Friday: 8:00am to 5:00pm, Saturday: 8:30am to 12:30pm

How Compliance Packaging Can Improve High-risk Patient Medication Adherence

How Compliance Packaging Can Improve High-risk Patient Medication Adherence

There is a staggering percentage of people who don’t take their medication correctly, but pharmaceutical packaging aims to enhance patient compliance by using new technology to identify the causes of non-adherence.

Medication adherence plays a vital role in the prevention and successful management of chronic diseases, especially in high-risk patients. Compliance packaging is a key tool for managing this groups.

In healthcare, non-adherence to prescription drugs contributes to morbidity, and mortality. Poor medication adherence increases the likelihood of preventable disease progression,  avoidable doctor, and can lead to increase health care costs. 

“Drugs will not work if they are not taken,” says Dr. Axelrod. An estimated half of patients with a chronic illness struggle with medication adherence.

Besides, compliance packaging is low-cost, and it’s convenience for  patient to follow the prescriptions by doctor.  Using compliance packaging, such as blister packs and dosage strips, helps synchronize medication refills, and  enhances accessibility.

compliance packaging

Compliance packaging

How compliance packaging works

Health systems have a good opportunity to provide a compliance package to patients, but most of them do not offer. They usually pack manually or semi-automatically for a limited time but there are a few health systems that have embraced full automation of compliance packaging on their own.

Compliance packaging, also known as adherence packaging, combines all of a patient’s medications into a single package, for examples, blister packs or pouches. As a result,  it easier for them to follow their medication schedule.

Blister packs

To sort all the patient’s medication, the machine will do the process. The machine will organize patient’s medications according to the prescribed dosage, time, frequency, and direction.

That makes it easier for the patient to take the right drugs at the right time. Thus, it is an effective way to manage chronic conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes, and high cholesterol.

Patients with life-threatening conditions has greater risk of medication non-adherence. For instance, patients with HIV, hepatitis C, or a heart condition  must comply to the medications.

Medication adherence packaging

Medication adherence packaging is rapidly growing in community pharmacies nationally. Pharmacists play a leading role in supporting medication adherence.

The services often include packaging medications as either single-dose or multi-dose packs,  which allows the medications to be filled at the same time each month.

Furthermore, medication packs are designed to facilitate medication administration. The packaging are organized according to morning, noon, dinner, and bedtime dosing.

The majority of community pharmacies that offer medication adherence packaging services also provide patient contact services, such as phone calls. It is to identify and resolve medication-related problems and confirm the patient’s current drugs regimen. In addition, they will send an SMS reminder for the upcoming recharge.

The Challenges of Medication Adherence for High-Risk Patients

Medication adherence is highly related to daily routine, and patients need to take drugs as indicated. Patients will miss the doses, when they need to manage their own medications with 8 or 10 different medicines every day.

Furthermore, the researchers found that 62% of polypharmacy members sometimes forgot to take their medications as prescribed. Then, 37% ran out of drugs before they could renew them, and 23% admitted that they had not paid enough attention to how they were taking their drugs.

Benefits for patients and payers

The compliance package is good for any patient who must take medication several times a day because of their chronic diseases. Thus, patients most likely to benefit from compliance packaging are those whose caregivers may be far or too busy to manage family members’ medications.

  • Makes it easier for patients to get all their medications in one container and delivered directly to their home.
  • It’s easy for patients to take drugs without having to remember unnecessary things.
  • Create a seamless care network by improving coordination between prescribers and pharmacists, eliminating gaps in care that can exacerbate health outcomes.
  • Results in a better patient experience which improves engagement and health outcomes.

Benefits for your health system

i. Patient loyalty.
Patient loyalty

Patients who have a good experience with compliance packaging are more likely to return when they require care in the future.

ii. Prescription refills.

The compliance packaging provide beneficial way that will encourage and ease the patents to refill their medications at your center.

However, compliance packaging is a cost-effective way to support better medication adherence for high-risk patients. A medication adherence plan can help members achieve long-term health goals and avoid financial waste by implementing more intuitive and proactive medication management strategies.

Considering both the clinical and business benefits of compliance packaging, I believe most health systems will do compliance packaging by themselves or through a third party within the next five years.

Will your system be one of them?

Pillplan is one of the pharmaceutical healthcare that provides compliance packaging to the customer. PillPlan is helping Malaysians stay healthy by making medication easier to access and manage. If you want to know more info about PillPlan please check it out here!

About the author

Bachelor of Science (Hons) Pharmacology, is a Customer Relationship Executive of Mayflax, one of the nation’s leading healthcare and marketing companies.

Share this post

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *