Leveraging data to increase adherence rates, drive revenue and improve patient outcomes
Ateb’s recent announcement that more than a million patients were enrolled and having their medications actively managed via its Time My Meds medication synchronization platform is big news, but the company isn’t about to rest on its laurels. Rather, Ateb is looking to use what it has learned from these patients to help pharmacies improve both their business and their patients’ outcomes.
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“With the data we’ve ascertained from a million patients enrolled in our med sync program, we can start helping to identify and stratify the patients more effectively by using technology to keep patients adherent and improve pharmacy business, for example, by looking at DIR fees and remuneration issues,” Ateb president and CEO Frank Sheppard told Drug Store News.
Among the challenges facing most pharmacies identified by Ateb’s Data Analytics Team is an issue around patient retention. Sheppard said that at the beginning of a given year, the average pharmacy has a base of about 3,500 patients, one-third of whom will become inactive over the course of the year. At the same time, the pharmacy will serve a similar number of new patients, two-thirds of whom will not be retained by the pharmacy.
“Pharmacy is overlooking their opportunity with patient retention and patient management to pick up a lot of fills,” Sheppard said. “That is a huge opportunity for the pharmacies to engage, attract and build their business with the new patients they’re seeing.”
In order to help pharmacies retain the patients they have, while growing their base through retention of new customers, Ateb has put the appointment-based model at the center of its solutions, which begins with Time My Meds. But Sheppard notes that “the appointment-based model is broader than just med sync,” adding, “it focuses on identifying patients for whom a high-touch pharmacy intervention can help the patient achieve a better health outcome.”
Ateb’s strategic approach is to develop and provide pharmacy the tools and processes to become a vital resource in delivering affordable and effective patient disease management.
Sheppard pointed to Ateb’s proactive refill reminders and outbound notification calls to patients who have begun a new chronic therapy as a key touchpoint, adding a level of personalization and increasing the likelihood that a patient remains adherent by effectively a factor of two. With 11,000 people turning 65 years old every day, an age group which fills more than twice as many scripts per year, the potential influx of patients with chronic conditions could bring more of these opportunities to the pharmacy. Plus this age group also may be eligible for such services as vaccinations, medication therapy management and point-of-care testing. With Ateb’s chronic care management programs, Ateb is well-positioned to be their strategic partner in providing care, while managing quality measures tied to reimbursements.
Ateb’s Patient Management Access Portal, or PMAP, is a single platform featuring a dashboard that illustrates a pharmacy partner’s performance on such quality metrics as Medicare Star ratings measures and EQuIPP ratings, offering actionable solutions to help maximize their reimbursements. It also allows access to such platforms as iMedicare for comparison of Medicare Part D plans.
With 1-in-5 Medicare patients on average being readmitted to the hospital within 30 days, Ateb is the bridge to connect its pharmacy partners to collaborate with hospitals in providing transitional care for recently discharged patients to prevent hospital readmissions and reduce Medicare readmission penalties, which are projected to cost hospitals $528 million in 2017.
Ateb also is working with its partners to release Connected For Life, an integrated smart-phone app built around patient medication management that focuses on bidirectional interaction between pharmacy and patient, enabling the entire healthcare team to track and manage the patient’s health.
Additionally, the company has two dedicated teams to support its pharmacy partners to deploy Ateb’s solutions — a move that works to make Ateb a strategic partner.
“We’re dedicating our time and effort, not just to analytics for engaging patients, but also to the blocking and tackling it takes to make patients feel most comfortable with what a pharmacy is doing,” Sheppard said. “Sometimes the challenge is starting the conversation, and we continue to innovate and implement solutions to make it a seamless effort for the pharmacy team.”
ATEB
HQ: Raleigh, N.C.
Founded: 1992
President and CEO: Frank Sheppard
Specialty: Patient engagement solutions, med sync