McKesson pilots adherence performance solution for pharmacies

PITTSBURGH — McKesson Pharmacy Systems and Automation has launched a pilot program to test its Adherence Performance reporting solution and provide pharmacies with an adherence rating similar to the CMS Star Ratings provided to health plans.



This rating can help pharmacies understand their adherence rating by organizing pharmacy management system data and giving pharmacies succinct information on target patients who should be included in an adherence program.



“Our Adherence Performance reporting solution helps each pharmacy focus on a group of specific patients whose medication adherence behavior has the most negative impact on the pharmacy’s adherence rating,” said Emilie Ray, president, MPS&A. “Rather than leaving our pharmacies to sift through charts and spreadsheets generated from other reports, we’ve created a real-time set of reports to give pharmacists the information they need to take swift action with specific patients.”



The new adherence solution from MPS&A also provides pharmacies with the following reports:

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  Dashboard summary: Shows the organization’s overall adherence rating for all locations along with benchmarking data showing how the organization compares to the rest of its market. This summary also shows the organization’s adherence rating trend over time;


• 
  Adherence ratings by pharmacy location: Pharmacies can understand which locations have higher and/or lower ratings to target improvement plans by location;


• 
  Adherent patient target number: Specifies how many additional patients need to be adherent to increase rating;


• 
  Adherence rating by plan: Report for pharmacies to share with plans to show their current adherence rating and improvement over time;


• 
  Target patient list: Summary list of patients to target for an adherence program; and


• 
  Patient group summary: Report by patient group set up in the pharmacy management system.

The Adherence Performance solution is the second offering from the MPS&A Informatics Program that focuses on providing pharmacies with actionable data. The first solution was released to large chain and outpatient pharmacies in 2013 and focuses on business optimization. These reports focus on operations analysis and highlight actions pharmacies can take to increase efficiency and drive down the cost of business.

 

“Within a few months of introducing our Business Optimization reports, we helped some customers increase their central fill pull through rates to save thousands of dollars per month on inventory costs. We also pinpointed areas for efficiency improvement during dispensing that helped a customer reduce wait times by 38%,” Ray said. “Based on these results, we’re confident that our Adherence Performance reports will bring results for our customers too.”



The MPS&A pilot program will test the Adherence Performance solution in three different pharmacy settings: large chain, outpatient and small independent. Once the pilot is complete, the solution will be made generally available to MPS&A customers. MPS&A also plans to release its Business Optimization reports to the small independent market in the coming months.