WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT MED SYNC Its the program thats sweeping the pharmacy world! Well, its at least generating a lot of interest. Its called *med sync*, and if you havent heard about it you should keep reading. The idea is to for patients with multiple medications to synchronize their refills -- to pick up all their medication at the same time, on one regularly scheduled trip to the pharmacy. There are several advantages, which youve probably already realized. Its a big time saver for patients who have to travel. For people who may have trouble remembering all their meds, it makes keeping track simpler. Ditto for those who lose track of what to refill when (and who may end up missing something because they forgot to refill) -- now theres only one date for everything. Thats why APhA refers to med sync as the appointment-based model. Its also more than just setting a standard pickup date. As APhA explained in its implementation guide: Once a month prior to the patient’s appointment day, the pharmacy staff calls the patient to determine the refill order for that month. This call is an important opportunity for pharmacy staff to listen to patients and have a conversation about the medications that are scheduled to be filled, reasons for discontinuing treatments, and whether the patient has been to the doctor or hospital in the past month. Its good for pharmacies, too, because you have fewer patient calls to field, and the process of reaching out to prescribers for refills is simplified. More importantly, though, it creates a time for you to speak with your patients -- a touchpoint to reinforce your value as part of their healthcare team. So what do you do? Sounds good, right? Or at least interesting? The next thing to do is check out APhAs well-crafted implementation guide (naspa.us/documents/grants/abm/2013-0923_ABMImplementationGuide-FINAL.pdf). It explains exactly what the goal is, and gives good suggestions for preparing to offer (and market) a med sync program -- sorry, an appointment-based model. The National Community Pharmacists Association also has some great resources on its site: bit.ly/1sm9cy8. Oh, and if you decide to go with a med sync program, be sure to register with APhAs consumer-facing Align My Refills site, alignmyrefills.
Posted on: Fri, 10 Oct 2014 03:13:05 +0000
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