With our Clinicoin Use Case Series, we are showcasing the various ways organizations, providers, and businesses can benefit from using the Clinicoin platform. We dive into how CLIN tokens can be used to engage and reward users, who in turn can exchange the tokens for products, services, and digital health tools in the marketplace.
In this installment, we look at how pharmacists can use Clinicoin to drive medication adherence in patients.
Meet Victor, a pharmacist
Victor is trying to better engage his patients and combat medication non-adherence — the most preventable cause of increased healthcare costs and even death in the United States. 50% of prescribed medications for chronic illness are not taken as directed, and 20–30% of prescriptions are never filled to begin with. The late Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, MD once said, “Drugs don’t work in patients who don’t take them.” This patient failure is estimated to cost the United States health care system an estimated $100 billion to $289 billion each year, contributing to at least 10% of hospitalizations and approximately 125,000 deaths.
With some chronic conditions, ignoring medication does not produce outwardly obvious issues. But these medications are important in the long term, to prevent serious complications from conditions like heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and asthma. There are others who simply forget to take the proper dosages, or have an aversion to pills or injections. As a society, there has been a push for more natural treatment options and a hesitancy to rely on medication indefinitely. This trend has led people with serious conditions to naively switch away from proven treatments to more experimental (and often, less successful) options.
Non-adherence has many causes, but at the root of them all is a lack of communication. This is where Clinicoin comes in. Pharmacists, like Victor, can utilize the secure, two-way messaging platform to counsel patients on new treatments and dosages, send reminders, respond to any patient questions, and follow up with patients about any side effects or complications. With Clinicoin, Victor can send patient reminders when a prescription is ready for pickup, when a prescription is eligible for a refill, when it is time to take the medication, and when yearly immunizations are available. With automated nudge and completion reminders, Victor can ensure his patients get the message. And Victor can drive adherence by rewarding patients who complete tasks, like picking up a prescription or taking the prescribed dosage, with CLIN tokens.
While pharmacists fight non-adherence, patients are able to manage their care with ease. Patients can use Clinicoin to request prescription refills, schedule an appointment with their pharmacist, and message their pharmacist with any questions regarding dosage, side effects, or drug interactions. Victor can assign a number of Clinicoin tokens as a reward for adhering to a treatment plan and patients can then use the tokens in the Clinicoin healthcare marketplace for access to useful tools, apps, products, and services.
As compliance improves, the costs associated with non-adherence rapidly decrease. By using the rewards-based Clinicoin platform, Victor can easily communicate with his patients and reward them for complying to a treatment plan — keeping them healthy and saving patients, and the health care system, money in the long run.
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