We are very proud to announce our first advocacy partnership with St. Joseph’s School of Pharmacy and Script Your Future. The Script Your Future campaign is led by National Consumers League (NCL) and designed to help you take your medicine as directed. It’s also created to help patients manage health problems such as diabetes, COPD, asthma, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. (more…)
A recent HealthAffairs article uses a robust methodology to examine the relationship between medication adherence and total health care use and costs. HealthAffairs results indicate that medication adherence leads to lower health care use and costs despite increased drug spending.
Across all conditions, adherence reduced total annual costs significantly.
Despite the increased pharmacy costs.
January’s Circle Square HIT Trends highlights the report and calculates the return on investment (ROI) for each of these conditions as:
These findings are significant enough to support a wide range of adherence programs, including patient-centric text reminder services like RememberItNow!
We recently had the privilege to present our software to the U. S. Office of eHealth Initiatives. As medication noncompliance increases, it drastically effects our health care system costing up to $292 billion annually.
To solve this problem the U.S. Office of eHealth Initiatives is actively seeking innovative medication management solutions to help. In response to their request for information (RFI), RememberItNow! was asked to present our software as a possible solution to help improve medical adherence. (more…)
We recently heard from one of our customers about how much she loves RememberItNow! medication reminders. Her enthusiasm was so contagious, we had to share.
Sharon lives near Sacramento, California with her five children and loving husband, Jim. Sharon and Jim keep a pretty tight schedule balancing full-time jobs and family duties. (more…)
As we all know, managing your medication is no fun. Or as our CEO, Pam Swingley’s father likes to say, “taking your pills is no thrill”. But what if software actually could make it a bit more fun - and you could get encouragement from your friends to remember your medicine and improve your health?
If you haven’t noticed already, websites and software solutions have been becoming more “fun”. For example if you compare the personal finance tool, Quicken from the 1990’s, to Mint.com of today, you’ll notice their differences. Mint contains more pleasing attributes – esthetically and in its usability. Quicken is…well, a bit boring. After Mint came along most of us were surprised managing finances was a little fun and easier than expected.
Our goal is to make taking control of your health a little fun too. There is no rule that says it should feel like a chore. Besides, if RememberItNow! can make it as easy and fun as possible to take your medications, you’ll learn to remember them and improve your health!
We agree with Jonathan Richman of DigitalDose.com, who plainly states, “Humans learn by playing…Somewhere along the way though, we stop playing and stop learning.”
With that in mind, our crafty product development folks are working on a point system to reward you for your steps toward good health. We want to make RememberItNow! really engaging, and can only make it close to perfect with your feedback.
So, please share what kind of game incentives you’d like to see. Or maybe you’d just like to share your thoughts on adding social media and gaming elements to RememberItNow! Do you have some creative insight you’d like to contribute? Please do! We’re listening.
Read more Jonathon Richman’s hopes to advance medication compliance, “The Only Way Pharma Can Improve Compliance: Fun” Or check out this video below on why fun can really change behavior.
Medication noncompliance happens for all types of reasons to people of all ages with a wide range of medical conditions:
* A patient with an respiratory infection stops taking their antibiotics when they feel better.
* On vacation, a diabetic patient runs out of their pills to control their blood sugar.
* A patient with a kidney infection saves a few pills to have on hand for the next infection.
* During finals week, a young college student forgets to take her birth control pills.
* Prescribed multiple medications from different doctors, a senior patient gets confused.
No matter what the situation, the consequences and costs of medication noncompliance are astonishing. Estimates of the total annual healthcare costs in the US resulting from patient noncompliance vary from $100 billion to $300 billion. Here are a few of the consequences:
* 10-25% of hospital & nursing home admissions, resulting in 340 deaths per day
* 20% of unintentional pregnancies in the US at a cost of $2.6 billion
* 3 times as many doctor visits & $2000 per year in additional costs compared to patients who follow their treatment plan
* 33-69% of all medication-related hospital admissions in the US at a cost of $100 billion
Do you take your medications as you should?
From: Allan Showalter, MD, AlignMap, Beyond Patient Compliance
Having a chronic illness can really put a dent in your spending. One of the ways to save on your health care costs is to take your medications as prescribed. That’s all it takes for many patients to save thousands of dollars, and to feel better too.
Need proof? A study by Rajesh Balkrishnan that appeared in the Journal of Urology found that older adults who regularly refilled prescriptions to treat overactive bladder syndrome lowered their overall healthcare costs, primarily by decreasing their hospitalizations and doctor visits, even if these patients were also being treated for other disorders.
In the third and final year of the study, the average healthcare costs of those patients who took their medication properly at least 90 percent of the time was $3,143.58, compared to more than twice that - $6,872.27 - for those participants who took their overactive bladder medications as instructed less than half of the time. That’s a difference of about $3,700.
Remembering to refill your prescriptions and to take your medications on time not only has a big impact on your health, medication compliance will help your financial situation as well.
According to a new report sponsered by the National Pharmaceutical Council (NPC), more employers are taking steps to improve their employees’ health by making sure they take their medicines as prescribed.
“It’s well documented that people with chronic diseases who take their medications as prescribed are healthier and more productive,” said NPC President Dan Leonard. “This report shows that employers are actively taking steps to encourage medication compliance to help improve the health and well-being of employees and their families.”
Employers were asked to rate the importance of a variety of workforce health management objectives, 89% of employers gave Medication Compliance a rating of 4 or 5 on a 1-5 scale of importance. Only Preventive Care (97%) and Lifestyle Behaviors (91%) were rated more highly by survey respondents.
In-depth interviews confirmed interest in and recognition of the long-term value of medication compliance among large self-insured employers, and indicated smaller employers are becoming more engaged, perhaps because health plans and PBMs are working to raise awareness and provide solutions to improve medication compliance.
The timing and findings of this report couldn’t be better for the launch of RememberItNow! Our service is designed to make it easy to take the right medication, at the right time, in the right dose. Built on a patient-centric platform, RememberItNow! is an affordable and quick to deploy medication compliance solution for employers of all sizes.
The report is available on NPC’s website at www.npcnow.org.
As a nurse, I see many patients admitted to the hospital as a result of not taking their medications correctly. Whether a patient discontinues it because he or she feels better, they skip a dose, run out of their prescription, or simply forget to take it; the consequences related to medication non-compliance are serious and sometimes even fatal.
The FDA estimates that over 50% of patients with chronic illnesses, who take medications, don’t use them correctly. This is extremely dangerous, especially for those with illnesses kept under control through their medication. Medication misuse is also expensive, costing Americans an estimated $76 billion a year in out-of-pocket expenses!
Recently, an elderly couple nearly died after having car trouble on their way home to Helendale, California. In attempt to find an alternative route after facing a road closure, the couple was found by in California’s San Bernardino county desert collapsed from dehydration.
The couple had tried to navigate their way down a nearby dirt road, and after their car had become stuck, they started walking. After looking for help (for only a short time), the man collapsed from dehydration, and the woman continued to search for help, but soon fell down 35-foot embankment into a riverbed. Fortunately, they were both rescued much later after someone had come across the husband, but sadly this disaster could have been prevented.
If you are planning to take a road trip this summer, don’t forget to pack an emergency kit for your car. Should you buy one from the store? Forget about it! You can make your own for a fraction of the cost. Here’s what you’ll need: (more…)
