Thrifty White's Tim Weippert on med sync

Last year, Drug Store News covered extensively the results from Thrifty White's successful medication synchronization program. DSN recently checked in with Tim Weippert, Thrifty White EVP pharmacy, to get an update.

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DSN: How has Thrifty White's med sync program progressed in the past year?



Tim Weippert: Over two years ago, we did this [study] with Virginia Commonwealth University and provided the results ... where [proportion of days covered] scores were coming in at around 80%. That was the early stages of our medication synchronization program. Now we've been at this program for about three-and-a-half years. We just had some analytics done [on research] that was conducted between August 2013 and August 2014, and basically what we're seeing is those 80% marks are now rising to, in some disease states, over 90% of PDC scores. In a lot of cases, we're seeing average days of therapy where patients are now on this program at 353 days once they're on this program. Those are just phenomenal results, which means that we're getting a little more than 11-out-of-12 fills when the national average is still sitting at four or five.



DSN: What are some of the programs and processes that have come out of the medication synchronization program?



Weippert: There's a lot of talk around comprehensive medication reviews and medication therapy management, and where those are and where they're not in relationship to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services needing to see greater results. We now tie all those into this appointment. And we're becoming best-in-class with some of the MTM providers, such as OutcomesMTM and Mirixa, and showing those [completion] rates that are 10%, 11% and 12% that CMS is seeing — we're probably double that or higher today in completion rates. So that's one thing that has just been a tremendous avenue for us, and again it increases the engagement with our patient.



One of the things that we've just initiated here in the last few months is what we call our Thrifty White Care Coordination. That's around discharge counseling and medication reconciliation for patients. We initiated this program and have been piloting it with some of the transitional care facilities on the long-term care side. ... We get a pharmacist hooked up with that patient and/or their guardian prior to them leaving the facility, and literally do a complete med [reconciliation] and discharge counseling, making sure that those patients are understanding their medications before they leave and then also making sure they have medications in hand before they leave. Even beyond that, we know that people still don't stay on their meds, so we follow that up with calls three and seven and 30 days after they leave the facility. After that 30 days, then we've got them on our synchronization program, and we're talking with them monthly.



DSN: How many patients are enrolled in Thrifty White's med sync program today, and what is the growth trajectory?



Weippert: We now are a little over 52,000 patients on this program, and that's across our 95 stores. We're still growing on an average of about 400 patients per week on this program. And that's a very steady growth; it continues to grow at that rate. It's just been phenomenal. The stores are doing a great job. Patients are really getting excited about it. The physicians in these communities are really getting excited about it. So it's certainly helping us grow the program.



DSN: What are the benefits to the patient around a robust med sync program?



Weippert: For the patient, it's all [about] value services. No. 1, it's one visit to the pharmacy. That's been huge. Then it's the ability to bring in the other [services] that patients maybe don't think about — it's time for your immunizations or have you considered your flu shot for this time. Or you know, when a CMR does come up because of a Part B plan, we have that opportunity to review all of your medications for the year. We're starting to see where the patients starting to reach out to us and start asking some of these questions. It certainly comes down to them being more healthy. ...



I talked about our Thrifty White Care Coordination, which our pharmacists are very involved in. The other big [initiative] that we're pushing is getting our pharmacists involved in going out to their communities to employer groups, service clubs, community groups, chambers of commerces, finding additional patients that we can work with and help. It sort of ties into a new position, which we've added to our company, which we call Health and Wellness Advisors, [who] are assisting our pharmacists in finding those opportunities within our communities.



DSN: What are the numbers?



Weippert: Prescription counts are up. We're seeing nice steady growth of about 4.5% to 5% in prescription counts. [Last years] VCU study showed that we had about 2.8 more refills that came from med sync. This new study now shows that has also increased. That it s now 3.5 additional refills. So subsequently, revenues are impacted and are going up in this process. All the additional services that this now provides because of the program has certainly brought many good new business avenues for us. [And] we believe these medication synchronization results have really helped us get into some networks that we haven't been in the past.



DSN: Why is medication synchronization important in the healthcare landscape?



Weippert: I'm going to give the one simple answer that we use all the time, it's all about the patient. Healthy outcomes. It's about taking care of this patient. In any type of population, we talk about provider status and having the ability as pharmacists to have provider status. This gets us even closer. ... It's bringing better health outcomes and what we believe is a resulting reduction in overall healthcare spend. ... We're changing the landscape of our pharmacy. We took this paradigm shift about two-and-a-half years ago and now it's actually happened where pharmacy is really something that we do, but it isn't everything that we do. That’s really the final story to all of this. Pharmacy is more than just the pills in the bottle.