Providers have long struggled to answer the question of how to improve medication compliance for individuals with complex health needs. From rising out-of-pocket costs to low health literacy to transport issues, there are many barriers that stand between the individuals they serve and the treatment needed to ensure better health outcomes. However, there are solutions to these adherence issues as well.

By applying the most appropriate medication adherence strategies, from automation tools to telehealth to financial aid, care providers can utilize these solutions to help the individuals they serve overcome these barriers and improve their health and lives.

These strategies include:

Medication Synchronization and Automation

Many individuals with behavioral health conditions or intellectual & developmental disabilities have not just one but multiple chronic conditions in need of management—and multimorbidity means a need for multiple and often overlapping medication regimens. Keeping up with these complex medication regimes can have a significant negative impact on health-related quality of life¹.

It’s all too easy to lose track of which medications need to be refilled and when, especially for individuals who struggle with cognitive or memory issues. Multiple medication refill dates are hard for individuals without the time or means of transit for frequent trips to the pharmacy. All these factors can lead to missed doses, treatment gaps, and ultimately, worse health outcomes.

Synchronizing medication refills so individuals can get all of their medications at once cuts down on the need to remember complex medication schedules or make multiple trips to the pharmacy. Furthermore, in addition to bundling medication refills together, pharmacies can use automated refill reminders to help individuals avoid gaps in treatment.

Take Full Advantage of Medication Automation with Medherent

Altruix’s premier tool for medication adherence, Medherent, is built specifically to help individuals with behavioral health conditions or intellectual & developmental disabilities comply with their medication plans while easing the administrative burdens medication adherence strategies can place on care providers.

With Medherent’s smart adherence system, individuals and providers can automatically track medication doses. Medherent’s remote monitoring capabilities give your care team its own personal medication management assistant, reducing the time and effort needed to ensure individuals have and are taking the right medicine at the right time. Integrating Medherent with refill synchronization tools enables providers to trigger the refill process without the need for manual intervention when a patient runs low on medications.

Pharmacy Team Health Coaching

Synchronized refills and automated refill reminders can do a lot to overcome some of the practical and logistics challenges standing in the way of medication adherence. However, these medication adherence strategies on their own don’t solve all of the challenges that stand in the way of compliance with medication regimens.

For example, low health literacy or a lack of trust in healthcare establishments or providers can lead to individuals feeling overwhelmed by their treatment plans or uncertain about their effectiveness or necessity. Another medication compliance strategy must be used to overcome these emotional, mental, and educational barriers.

Health coaching has been shown to help individuals improve their medication adherence². When pharmacy teams provide health education, individuals can not only become better educated about their conditions and their treatment plans, but also rely on mental and emotional support from partners invested in their health and well-being.

Telehealth Services

During the COVID-19 pandemic, remote healthcare services became an indispensable and widely used tool for individuals to keep in touch with their physicians and stay on top of their healthcare needs. Now that telehealth has been so widely adopted, it has become an especially useful medication adherence strategy.

Telemedicine has a well-researched track record as a medication adherence solution for individuals with complex conditions, with research showing they can help individuals with depression, bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia³ stick to their treatment regimens.

Used as part of a medication adherence strategy, telemedicine consultations give individuals convenient access to their healthcare providers, especially when transportation issues, schedule conflicts, or mobility challenges can get in the way of in-person visits. Managing prescription refills becomes easier for the individual, and follow-up becomes easier for the provider. Telehealth also grants individuals a degree of privacy and comfort not always achievable by in-person visits to a clinic.

Making the Most of Telehealth with Medherent

By integrating Medherent into your telehealth system, you gain access to real-time data on an individual’s adherence patterns during your telehealth consultations, enabling more personalized and proactive interventions based on actual adherence trends. Medherent features its own interface that allows for video calls, providing individuals and care teams another convenient avenue for ongoing communication about health needs and goals.

Collaborative Care Models

The collaborative care model is transforming behavioral health treatment outcomes by coordinating the efforts of stakeholders from physicians to pharmacists to patients. Individuals achieve improved health outcomes and quality of life from a more personalized approach to healthcare. Research has shown long-term improvements in adherence to antidepressant medications thanks to a collaborative approach to healthcare interventions⁴.

With the comprehensive data Medherent collects on individual medication adherence patterns, all members of a collaborative care team can stay on the same page and coordinate their medication compliance strategies, saving time and effort normally spent on medication administration to provide more individualized support for the individuals they serve.

Medication Compliance Tools for Individuals

Providers can use innovative medication adherence strategies to improve compliance with medication and treatment regimens. There are also tools for medication adherence individuals can use on their own or with the assistance of their care providers to simplify the task of adherence and ensure they take the right medicine at the right time.

By using tools such as the following, individuals can find a solution that works to keep on top of their medication adherence:

• Pill Organizers help patients visually organize their medications by day or time of day to easily track whether they’ve taken their medications and avoid double doses or missed doses
• Medication Reminder Apps use push notifications, texts, or alarms synchronized with an individual’s medication schedule to provide timely reminders to take or refill medications. Some apps even allow tracking of doses taken or missed, offering insights into adherence patterns.
• Smart Bottles and Caps use embedded sensors to track when a pill bottle is opened and synchronize with medication reminder/monitoring apps to enable individuals and providers to track adherence.
• Custom Blister Packaging groups doses into pre-packed, clearly labeled blister packs that often correspond to specific times of day so individuals don’t have to manually sort their pills.
• Automated Dosing Systems automatically provide the correct dose of medication at the right time and send notifications when a dose is due.

Medherent goes beyond traditional pill organizers or reminder apps, offering a more comprehensive solution than manual tools by integrating automated reminders with real-time tracking, including providing reminders when a dose is missed and notifying caregivers or healthcare providers if consistent non-adherence is detected.

Financial Assistance Programs

One of the biggest issues that stand in the way of individual adherence is the rising costs of medication. Providers’ medication adherence strategies must engage with the reality of the individuals they serve, sometimes struggling with the effect accessing the medication they need can have on their finances. Providers can utilize several financial assistance programs and strategies to improve individual medication adherence:

• Help individuals apply for Patient Assistance Programs (PAPs), which are offered by pharmaceutical companies to provide free or discounted medications to individuals who qualify based on income or insurance status.
• Connect individuals to Copay Assistance Programs that reduce out-of-pocket costs for insured patients and lower the financial burdens of copayments.
• Reach out to State Pharmaceutical Assistance Programs (SPAPs) that provide financial assistance and subsidies for medications that are not covered under Medicare Part D.
• Make use of Medicare’s Extra Help program, which provides financial assistance for prescription drug costs, including premiums, deductibles, and copayments, for low-income individuals enrolled in Medicare Part D.
• Provide individuals with Prescription Discount Cards and Coupons that allow them to purchase medications at a reduced rate at participating pharmacies.
• Federally qualified hospitals and health centers can also purchase outpatient drugs at discounted prices through the 340B Drug Pricing Program.

Make the Most of Your Medication Adherence Strategies with Altruix

Through the power of community pharmacy, collaborative care, and advanced medication adherence technology, we help providers offer more effective healthcare. Reach out to us today and start a partnership that empowers the individuals you serve to achieve independence, peace of mind, and superior health outcomes while your staff saves time and energy.

Contact Altruix

1. Gebresillassie, Begashaw Melaku, and Abebe Tarekegn Kassaw. “Exploring the Impact of Medication Regimen Complexity on Health-Related Quality of Life in Patients with Multimorbidity.” Journal of Clinical Pharmacy and Therapeutics, vol. 2023, no. 4, 20 July 2023, p. e1744472, www.hindawi.com/journals/jcpt/2023/1744472/, https://doi.org/10.1155/2023/1744472.
2. Wolever, Ruth Q., and Mark H. Dreusicke. “Integrative Health Coaching: A Behavior Skills Approach That Improves HbA1c and Pharmacy Claims-Derived Medication Adherence.” BMJ Open Diabetes Research and Care, vol. 4, no. 1, 1 May 2016, p. e000201, drc.bmj.com/content/4/1/e000201, https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjdrc-2016-000201.
3. Basit, Saadia A., et al. “Telemedicine Interventions for Medication Adherence in Mental Illness: A Systematic Review.” General Hospital Psychiatry, vol. 62, no. 1, Jan. 2020, pp. 28–36, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.genhosppsych.2019.11.004.
4. Katon, Wayne, et al. “Long-Term Effects of a Collaborative Care Intervention in Persistently Depressed Primary Care Patients.” Journal of General Internal Medicine, vol. 17, no. 10, Oct. 2002, pp. 741–748, https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1525-1497.2002.11051.x. Accessed 13 Feb. 2021.