Introducing PillPack for Caregivers
PillPack’s mission is to make it easier to manage chronic health conditions. Our customers are the 60% of people in America living with one of these conditions, like diabetes, hypertension, or heart failure.
For these folks the existing pharmacy system becomes overwhelming. There’s the time spent chasing refills, picking up different prescriptions, and filling pill boxes. Plus, the chaos of spreadsheets, sticky notes, and alarm clocks to stay organized. It can be a full-time job. PillPack takes over all these chores and makes it easier stay on track with medications.
Forty-three million friends, family, and health professionals in the US provide care and support for someone else.
We’re proud that we’ve helped tens of thousands of customers feel healthier and happier. Now, we’re expanding our service to make life easier for the “helpers”. These are the 43 million friends, family, and health professionals in the US that provide care and support for someone else. By adding caregivers to PillPack, we can better help each other stay healthy.
I’m part of the product team that designed and built functionality that supports our customers and the helpers in our network. As we worked on this project a few capabilities were the most important to get right:
Single sign-in
Many people wear a lot of hats when it comes to health and wellness. If you’re both a PillPack customer and a caregiver, you can now use one login to manage all your related accounts, like those for a child and/or parent. No logging out and logging in, sharing passwords, or creating new email addresses.
Flexible teams
Health is a team sport. Friends, family members, health care aides, or combinations of these folks pitch in from time to time (or all the time). PillPack adapts to these often-unspoken nuances of different social ties. Our features are simple to use, but support complex relationships between customers. For example:
- An adult who cares for her Dad with Alzheimer’s. She needs complete control and access, and wants us to call her if we have any questions about her Dad’s care.
- Spouses who are both PillPack customers. They want access to each other’s accounts so one person can check in on both shipments. They each manage their own account and coordinate their own insurance and doctors.
- An individual who coordinates care for his child and his parents. He isn’t a PillPack customer, but needs to be the main contact for his child’s account. And, his out-of-state parents want him to be able to track shipments and troubleshoot.
In each of these situations, and the million more that could exist, different people may be in charge of doctor’s visits, insurance, and day-to-day care. It’s important that everyone is on the same page, so we make it simple to add more than one caregiver to your account and it’s easy to provide clear direction about who we should contact with questions. With the right team and communications in place, nothing will fall through the cracks.
Privacy matters
And, of course, privacy and security are critically important. We make sure people only have access to information that’s approved for sharing. Each customer defines their own caregiving team. Each person has to securely verify their relationship before they get access. We also notify the customer when someone is added, and it’s easy to remove someone from a caregiving role at any time.
We’ve always known that many of our customers have folks helping them manage medications at home. Now, PillPack actively brings all those people into the loop. We recognize that there’s no one way to manage medications that works for everyone. So, the digital ties between PillPack accounts are as flexible and unique as the personal connections between the people we serve. Working together, we can all stay healthier and stronger.
PillPack is available in the United States, nation-wide. There is no cost beyond co-pays and we’re in-network with most insurance providers. Learn more at pillpack.com/caregivers.
