Patient education can mean the difference between mediocre and stellar medication adherence. Optimal patient adherence is important for the obvious reason of better treatment outcomes for patients. But, there are numerous indirect benefits as well; such as helping to contain costs for the healthcare system overall.
Patient education requires an active partnership among the key players and pharmacists certainly have a seat at this table. In fact, a recent article notes the importance of how “pharmacists can address knowledge gaps and health literacy challenges to help people with chronic conditions stay adherent to drug therapies.”
Specialty medications require even more patient education than other medications, in terms of how to take a medication, co-morbidity awareness, and side effect management. This is why BioPlus Specialty Pharmacy has a team of pharmacists who create and manage best-in-class patient education for our specialty patients.
Patient education starts from our first contact with each patient all the way through the treatment process. Our adherence rates reflect, in large part, the effectiveness of our patient education.
This patient education starts with a Patient Onboarding Journey™ (through email or text — whichever the patient prefers) in which all patients receive a welcome message and additional communications to keep them informed throughout the benefit investigation and the prior authorization processes. As soon as the order is confirmed for shipment, the patient is notified. At this time, any outstanding consent forms also are resolved. Finally, we close the loop by including refill reminders at the appropriate times.
Then, there’s our Patient Medication Journeys,™ which are advanced patient engagement programs tailored for specific medications that make treatment continuation a challenge or medications where patients would benefit from extra personalized support.
For example, the Patient Medication Journey for Otezla®, a drug that is particularly challenging for patients to stay on therapy, consists of 24 personalized communications mapped to the medication therapy journey that delivers engaging and educational content when it is most timely and relevant to patients. The journey has proven to keep patients on therapy, even with challenging, high-touch therapies, such as Otezla. With the ongoing support of BioPlus’ Patient Journeys, an impressive 84 percent of patients on Otezla have stayed on therapy.
For doctors and staff, the BioPlus Patient Journeys result in fewer calls and reduces the administrative burden, while for patients this leads to increased patient engagement and better outcomes.
More than ever before, the healthcare community understands that an active partnership between patients and their healthcare team can empower patients and lead to better outcomes. And BioPlus has stepped up to this challenge!