Adherence gets some stickiness
“No one gets paid unless patients improve adherence.”
That’s what Aaron McKethan, SVP of strategy and business development for RxAnte, had to say in a Jan. 13 article on Forbes.com, “A digital health acquisition to watch.” The story focused largely on RxAnte’s recent acquisition by Millennium Laboratories in December — which the author described as a “little-known, private equity-backed urine drug testing company” — and the technology it uses to improve patient adherence.
Basically, RxAnte employs predictive analytics to mine patient data, applying variables like past refill history and the number of drugs a patient takes to determine on a scale of 0% to 100% the likelihood that the patient will be compliant with their medications. In July, the company began a pilot with Coventry Health to measure the impact of having doctors and nurses who are signed up for the program, reach out to their patients that RxAnte has identified as at-risk. The results of the study are expected to be released in the spring.
What DSN finds most interesting about the Forbes.com article is not the story itself — DSN covers companies like RxAnte and its partners all the time and has for years. Moreover, it is a strong sign that adherence is becoming part of the public conversation around health reform, including lowered costs and improved outcomes — it’s not just community pharmacy advocates saying it any more. And as the rubber meets the road on health reform this year, and payers demand better results and more transparency, and physicians need help managing the risk of delivering better patient outcomes, DSN expects more of these stories to emerge.
Rob Eder is the editor in chief of The Drug Store News Group, publishers of Drug Store News and DSN Collaborative Care magazines. You can contact him at [email protected].