We’ve created a blog section on pharmacyquality.com for posts related to managing performance information and other general quality-related topics. If you have common questions or suggested topics, we’d love to hear from you! We hope you enjoy the topics and possibly even learn a thing or two about performance measurement, EQuIPPTM, or the broad topic of pharmacy quality.
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Shedding Light on Summertime Medication Adherence
Increased sunshine during summer months usually encourages outdoor activity, inspires summer vacations and brings on a potential decrease in regular patient visits at your pharmacy location. Yet seeing your patients less in-store shouldn’t mean a decrease in communications. If anything, it means it is time to ramp up text messaging reminders and physically make phone calls to your patients. This is a chance to be proactive: remind patients of the importance of refilling their medications and review medication instructions. Let’s shed some light on summertime medication adherence and take a closer look at what to review with would-be travelers: Medication Supplies- Whether...
Improving Adherence through Medication Packaging
The pill bottle is a pharmacist’s standard medication delivery container, effective in holding a large amount of medicine. When given to the patient, it’s up to the patient to remember when, how many and why to take their medication. Even when directions are clear on the label, factors like patient forgetfulness and bottle spills can cause medication adherence to suffer. Pharmacists can improve the quality of medication use by offering other packaging solutions. Packaging options include: Blister packaging- seals medications in sheets or cards and can organize multiple doses of medicine by time of day and day of week. Senior patients will...
When to Improve Adherence
You don’t improve adherence in a day – you improve adherence daily! This simple truth caused a dramatic change in my mindset around patient adherence. The secret for pharmacists is that we need to be focused on improving adherence routinely, as in every day, not once in a while or every so often! The next question then quickly becomes visible: How do you do it? Let me share with you one strategy you can use. It involves your OUTLIERS. As a brief review, you can find your OUTLIERS by logging into EQuIPP™ and selecting the performance dashboard or by clicking on the "MY PROGRAMS" tab. You...
How to Better Educate Your Patients: The Pharmacist Vs. The Internet
The education of proper medication use should be a top priority for pharmacists in their efforts to improve the quality of patient care. Since pharmacists are medication experts on the front lines of health, actively working to help their patients live healthy lives, they should also be ready to combat misinformation and disseminate accurate information to their patients. Where else are patients getting their information? The Internet. The internet is a wealth of information and potential misinformation for your patients. Yes, even your patient demographic of 65+ are actively online. Here’s a few stats reported by Pew Research Center’s Internet/Broadband Fact Sheet:1 “Roughly...
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