Compliance today saves dollars tomorrow, and pharmacy is here to help

WHAT IT MEANS AND WHY IT’S IMPORTANT — Life doesn’t give you too many of those Magic 8 Ball moments, at least not the kind you can find at the pharmacy counter. Just ask the 8 Ball if medicine compliance is important for retail pharmacy, and the answer undoubtedly will come back, “It is decidedly so.”

(THE NEWS: Surgeon general, NCL introduce Script Your Future campaign. For the full story, click here)

Everyone knows that compliance today saves dollars tomorrow. The question is whether or not stakeholders — from the payers down to the patients — realize that the most accessible compliance tool is the white-coated healthcare professional who just adjudicated that prescription.

The fact is, if you increase compliance to prescription regimens, people are healthier for it to the tune of $290 billion in annual savings. And the pharmacy counter is just about the best place to realize those savings.

And that means the Script Your Future campaign could become the straw that stirs that value-of-pharmacy-awareness concoction. Ask the Magic 8 Ball what the chances of that are, and the answer very well may be, “Without a doubt.”

Because if you take a look at the list of sponsors and partners of the program, there certainly are a number of pharmacy influencers on the list, including pharmacy operators CVS Caremark, Kerr Drug and Walgreens.