Package system makes compliance easy
Package system makes compliance easy
The United States spends an estimated $100 billion a year on the cost of lost productivity and unnecessary medical expenses from noncompliance with prescribed medication regimens. More than 50% of all prescriptions are taken incorrectly, national surveys show. But there's hope: An Ala bama study found that a unique medication packaging and dosing system improved compliance by more than 40% above the national average.
Medicine-On-Time is a square, one-inch, time-specific dosage cup that holds up to six pills. Each dosage cup holds the correct medications for one administration time and is hermetically sealed and labeled with three items: the patient's name, the medication's administration date and time, and the contents of the cup. Individual cups are assembled and provided to patients or caregivers in a five-row by seven-column array designed to look and function like a calendar. The system can be formatted for a weekly or monthly cycle.
"Gone from your grandmother's nightstand is the confusing clutter of five different prescription bottles," says Ian Salditch, president of Medicine-On-Time in Owings Mill, MD. "The idea of the system is to eliminate a layperson deciding what it means to administer a medication three times a day. Do I have to get up in the night to take this? Did I remember to take that pill before lunch? The dosage packaging system is filled by a pharmacist who looks at the patient's entire therapy and makes decisions about administration time based on efficacy and information about the patient's lifestyle." Gone also are handling and sorting of pills by patients or caregivers. "For seniors or AIDS patients taking five or more medications, this is a wonderful solution to confusion over how and when to take medication."
The packaging system also includes a physical description of the contents, he adds. "It indicates the name and purpose of the round yellow pill or that little green tablet."
More than 300 pharmacists nationwide supply the Medicine-On-Time system to their clients. "If I was a case manager sending a liver transplant patient home with seven or eight pill bottles, I'd encourage my client to ask his or her pharmacist about the system," Salditch says. It includes computer hardware and software and the patented packaging system; it costs pharmacists roughly $340 monthly to provide and adds little if any cost to the prescription. Also, because pharmacists must fill each cup with all the medications for a single administration, it forces them to pay attention to the entire medication regimen, he says. The system also synchronizes renewal times on all prescriptions. "This means your client only has one trip to the pharmacy each month and never allows a prescription to lapse," he says.
Currently, the best way for case managers to get Medicine-On-Time to their clients is to encourage them to request it from their pharmacists, he says. For more details, contact: Medicine-On-Time, 10085 Red Run Blvd., Owings Mills, MD 21117. Telephone: (800) 722-8824. Fax: (800) 386-8788. E-mail: [email protected]. Web site: http://www.wwhs.com/medtime/.
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