Walgreens unveils MedMonitor Complete; program will reduce costs, company says

DEERFIELD, Ill. Walgreens Health Services today unveiled a new drug utilization management program aimed at promoting prescription compliance among patients and holding down total healthcare costs.

The program, called MedMonitor Complete, is holistic in its approach, Walgreens noted. It uses an advanced, automated patient-matching process to provide a single clinical view of a patient, and maintains the patient’s claims history, even if they’ve changed their name, employer group or cardholder identification number.

MedMonitor integrates prescription and medical claims to review an entire population and identify patients’ risks for adverse drug events, according to the company. It also looks at the potential for patients’ non-compliance to “clinically appropriate standards of therapy.”

To boost compliance, clinical pharmacists communicate directly with patients and/or their health care professionals to alert them to drug-related problems such as over- or under-utilization, or opportunities to benefit from additional therapy. This process “effectively minimizes patient disruption while arming health care professionals with the necessary information to improve patient care,” Walgreens Health Services noted in a statement.

One large-scale application of the intervention program yielded $54 in savings per member per month, WHS added.

“Our goal with MedMonitor Complete is to provide healthcare professionals the most clinically relevant information that yields the greatest impact,” said Jim Langman, Walgreens’ vice president of clinical services. “The program’s impact calculations are pure, not artificially inflated with brand-to-generic conversions, step therapies and prior authorizations.”

Langman added that the results are “fully transparent,” allowing benefit managers to “clearly see reduced cost and positive health outcomes for their members.”