Drug delivery encompasses the methodologies, formulations, manufacturing processes, storage systems, and technologies involved in transporting pharmaceutical compounds to their target site in the body for therapeutic effect. It is essential to maximizing drug efficacy and improving patient outcomes.
Medication non-compliance remains severe, resulting in suboptimal treatment outcomes and higher healthcare costs. Doctors dispensing medications can directly educate patients on their prescribed medicines’ usage and side effects, thereby improving medication adherence.
One-Stop-Shop Model
The healthcare landscape is evolving into one-stop shops that offer a wide variety of services. Patients can be tested for illnesses, schedule appointments, receive results on time, and fill prescriptions in one place.
Traditionally, guidelines have encouraged people to bring their medication supplies before admission, but these often become separated or lost and may be destroyed. It undermines patient confidence in the pharmacy and increases drug waste.
Moreover, many PWIDs prefer to obtain drugs in an accessible venue, and several of our qualitative interviews highlighted the importance of SSP staff having lived experience. They want staff to know what it is like to inject, to be able to support them with their substance use and to provide information about PrEP, MOUD, and overdose prevention.
Enhanced Medication Management
Medication non-compliance is a significant healthcare challenge that contributes to suboptimal treatment outcomes. By integrating dispensing into doctors’ offices, they can monitor patient compliance and ensure patients receive their medications on time and as prescribed.
The ability to dispense medications in the office also helps reduce pharmacy errors, which can be caused by misinterpreting prescriptions or a pharmacist misinterpreting a doctor’s instructions. Additionally, doctors can educate patients directly about their prescriptions and provide face-to-face education on their proper use and possible side effects.
Nevertheless, logistical challenges, overpricing concerns, and government resistance remain hurdles doctors must overcome when dispensing meds. Meaningful collaboration and transparent pricing structures can help address these barriers. Ultimately, dispensing enables doctors to generate additional revenue and offer patients a more streamlined medication experience while maintaining the highest patient safety standards.
Personalized Patient Care
Personalized medicine uses molecular-genetic information to tailor healthcare to the individual’s unique physiology. Examples include drugs that are effective only in specific genetic subgroups of patients, such as erlotinib for lung cancer, and that minimize the need for chemotherapy by targeting HER-2 protein.
These approaches have created a tension between the desire to customize health care and the need to reduce costs. Biological distinctions create smaller pools of potential users for a given drug, incentivizing pharmaceutical companies to increase prices.
Medication delivery Valdosta,GA, personalized patient care capabilities can help to mitigate this inherent tension by reducing the cost of customized medicines and making them available to consumers who would otherwise not be able to access them. It can be essential for patients who live in pharmacy deserts or have complex medication regimens.
Improved Medication Access
Many Americans have struggled with medication access issues. From coverage challenges and benefit barriers to prescription cost limitations, these factors can lead patients to make tradeoffs, from delaying treatment due to a lack of affordable options to forgoing medication entirely.
Medication dispensing directly from the doctor’s office eliminates these barriers and ensures patients can acquire their medications promptly, with minimal delays. Dispensing medications in the office also gives physicians more oversight of their patients’ medication regimens.
This face-to-face interaction allows doctors to better educate their patients about the proper use of their medications, including dosage and potential side effects. It also helps reduce pharmacy errors and the impact of these errors on patient outcomes. Moreover, reporting adherence results to patients can help drive adherence behaviors and promote buy-in from the team.
Reduced Medication Non-Compliance
Medication non-compliance is a persistent and costly issue that contributes to poor health outcomes and billions in excess healthcare costs annually. Technology solutions like digital pill bottles, easy access to reconciled medication lists, and personalized reminder platforms can reduce patient non-adherence and improve clinical outcomes.
The causes of non-adherence are many and complex. Patients may not understand their chronic diagnosis or have difficulty adhering to medications because of side effects, forgetfulness, or multiple medications with different regimens. Cost is another major factor; some patients are unable to afford their prescriptions and resort to extreme forms of cost-coping, such as skipping doses or using expired medications.
Medication Delivery technology can help solve these adherence challenges by identifying risk factors for non-adherence. By integrating this data with legacy healthcare data, providers can better predict which patients are most likely to struggle and develop tailored healthcare technologies designed to reduce the barriers to adherence (e.g., depression treatment, lowering co-payments).
