Q&A: Using Data, Addressing Patient Barriers Can Effectively Improve Medication Adherence

From real-time data insights for patients to the innovative approaches at pharmacists’ disposals, opportunities for improving medication adherence across the population are significant. According to Andrew Maiorini, PharmD, FAHM, vice president of clinical programs at PerformRx, it’s all about utilizing the data in the marketplace and helping patients understand how they can overcome barriers to medication adherence in today’s health care landscape.

“It's about having a conversation. It's about empowering those members to really fully understand the benefit of taking the medication,” he told us. “Things like hypertension, for example, there's not that immediate feedback that the medication is providing any benefit. Having those conversations and explaining the long-term impacts of dealing with certain disease states, like hypertension, and empowering that member to really understand the value to their health and how it's important to them, that really helps reinforce that importance of taking those medications.”

In part 3 of our interview with Maiorini, he discusses how his company, PerformRx, is helping both patients and pharmacists navigate the increasingly prominent challenge of medication adherence. | image credit: Mirivox / stock.adobe.com

Read through part 3 of our interview with Maiorini as he explains the role of PerformRx in improving adherence outcomes among its members. Also, stay tuned for the full-length version of our interview with Maiorini, posting to Over the Counter podcasting channels this coming Thursday afternoon.

READ MORE: Patient Engagement, Communication Paramount in Improving Medication Adherence

Drug Topics: What is your organization doing right now, or how is it helping pharmacists, to improve patients’ medication adherence?

Andrew Maiorini: Just to paint a picture here, as a pharmacy benefit manager (PBM), we don't physically distribute medication. We are responsible for making sure that the medication’s processed at the point of sale and that we have an adequate pharmacy network to serve the membership. What we do is, we have various programs across the board. We do try to make sure that our patients are aware that they have certain services, things like mail order, that can help eliminate some of those barriers. Our biggest thing that we do in some of our outreach programs is making sure that we're incorporating a lot of those social determinant-type factors into our conversations with those members to make sure we're checking are there transportation issues, is there a cost barrier to them taking their medication?

What we find, though, is that it's about having a conversation. It's about empowering those members to really fully understand the benefit of taking the medication. Sometimes, it's very easy to understand, if you have an issue where there's pain, you take a pain medication, it relieves the pain. It's not that difficult to understand the value of taking that medication, or an antibiotic to treat an infection. But things like hypertension, for example, there's not that immediate feedback that the medication is providing any benefit. So sometimes, having those conversations and explaining the long-term impacts of dealing with certain disease states, like hypertension, and empowering that member to really understand the value to their health and how it's important to them, that really helps reinforce that importance of taking those medications.

Drug Topics: What systems, technologies, or general approaches do you believe are necessary to improve in order to reduce nonadherence going forward?

Andrew Maiorini: I could talk about some of the things that we're doing. It’s obvious from what the issues are, I don't think there's ever going to be a one-size-fits-all model because you have all of these different factors that are playing a role in nonadherence. What we're trying to do is not only just identify patients as we're seeing nonadherence. It's pretty straightforward to look at the data and say, ‘I know this member is on a medication they're supposed to take every month. I could see 2 or 3 missed pills, obviously something's not going on right here. Let's reach out and try to address or discuss with that member why this prescription isn't getting filled every month.’ At that point in time, they've already missed a couple fills, and the adherence rate’s already kind of slipping.

What we're really trying to do more of, and where I think things can improve in the future, is [starting] to really look at some of those data, not just the prescription fills, but other, socioeconomic factors as well. Some of those things could just be, how many pharmacies are within a walking distance of that patient’s home, if they’re somebody that doesn't have transportation, or is there a cost-related issue? Start to build those in better algorithms to try to be more preventative and try to identify patients at high risk of nonadherence before they start missing fills. Obviously, maintaining the adherence is always better than trying to get patients back onto something if they've already been missing.

I think with use of big data; I even think that there's a role here, at some point, for AI to help us mine that data and look for some of these potential flags that can lead us down a road of being able to identify patients at risk before the adherence starts to get off track.

READ MORE: Q&A: Pharmacists Guide Patients Through Clinical, Social Determinants of Nonadherence

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