“Drugs don’t work in patients that don’t take them.” - Former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop
Around 66% of adults in the United States take at least one prescription medication. Unfortunately, only half of the people on regular medication follow the prescribed drug doses and schedules.
While most people believe cost and accessibility are the biggest reasons people miss their doses, a multi-year pilot study by Express Scripts revealed the actual causes to be:
- Forgetting to take medications (39%)
- Not renewing prescriptions on time (20%)
- Delaying refills (10%)
Failing to take medications is a massive obstacle to any medical treatment’s success, causing at least 125,000 avoidable deaths and $100 billion in preventable medical costs every year.
After decades of finding ways to address medication non-adherence, the healthcare industry could be looking at a promising solution: multi-dose compliance packaging.
Compliance Medication Packaging vs. Multi-Dose Compliance Packaging: What’s the Difference?
Compliance packaging, also known as adherence packaging, refers to a specialized medication packaging system designed to help patients and healthcare providers ensure proper prescription adherence. It involves individually packaging drugs in pre-determined doses (often with clear labeling and organization) to simplify taking medications as prescribed.
Compliance packaging for single doses has been around for a long time, first appearing in the early 1960s as blister packs. However, most patients take more than one medication per day, thus requiring multiple blister packs.
To help manage multiple medications, patients got their prescriptions in vials or in blister packs. They had to take out each tablet or capsule, carefully count them according to the prescribed dose, and cautiously organize them in pillboxes.
Thanks to advancements in medical adherence technology, patients don’t have to do all that anymore. With multi-dose compliance packaging, prescriptions are pre-packaged into individual dosing cups.
For example, DosePacker’s tech-enabled multi-dose compliance packaging is designed to simplify the process of organizing and taking multiple medications. Each dose cup contains all the medicines required for a specific time or administration conveniently packaged in a tamper-evident dosing cup. Each dosing comes packaged and ready to take without the need to pour medications out of a vial or pop pills out of bubble packs.
The DosePacker tech-enabled multi-dose compliance packaging is designed to work with the MyDoses App, DoseMinder Smart Medbox, and CareCatalyst care facility software to alert patients and staff when medications are due to be administered and documents the administration using QR code scanning functions and video to verify.
4 Ways Care Homes Can Benefit from Multi-Dose Compliance Packaging
While multi-dose adherence packaging benefits many healthcare settings, it is incredibly impactful in facilities where patients or residents have complex medication needs or where medication administration requires strict oversight and documentation. Assisted living care homes are an excellent example.
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Here are four ways multi-dose compliance packaging can significantly benefit your care home staff and residents:
Improves Patient Medication Adherence
Multi-dose compliance packaging helps ensure patients get the right dose at the right time. As a result, it helps patients stay medication-compliant while significantly reducing medication errors.
Because their prescriptions are pre-packaged by dose with clear visual cues for medication administration, your staff and residents will find it easier to follow when and how patients should take their medications.
Streamlines Med Pass
Medication passing, or med pass, is administering medications to patients or residents in healthcare settings. While med pass may sound straightforward, it can be time-consuming because it involves accurate organization and documentation.
When your care home converts to multi-dose adherence packaging, your staff can spend up to 90% less time sorting and organizing medications and focus more on patient engagement activities. This speeds up the process and leaves less room for mistakes during administration.
Modern multi-dose packaging systems also include dosing alerts and medication tracking features that help care homes improve medication inventory control and maintain accurate records.
For example, when you pair the DosePacker multi-dose compliance packaging with other care facility technology (DosePacker Storage, DoseKart, MyDoses App, DoseMinder Smart Medbox, and CareCatalyst), the time you spend passing medications may drop by more than 50%.
Enhances Patient/Resident Satisfaction
Thanks to its clear dose cups, accurate labels, high-visibility font, color-coded schedule indicators, and tear-away med sheets, multi-dose compliance packaging helps make medication management less stressful and confusing for care home staff and residents.
By simplifying complex regimens, multi-dose adherence packaging makes self-administration easier for patients. This empowers them to take a more active role in their well-being, encourages independence, and enhances their overall experience.
Reduces Hazardous Pharmaceutical Waste
Multi-dose compliance packaging not only helps your care home address issues with medication adherence, management, and inventory, but it also helps reduce the amount of healthcare waste you produce.
Minimize drug surplus and deficit by accurately tracking the medications that get dispensed. The individually sealed dosing cups help to prevent cross-contamination and mix-ups, and our real-time connection between the pharmacy and the Care Catalyst care facility software helps staff reduce the requirement for discontinued medication destruction.
By reducing the number of leftover and expired prescriptions, multi-dose compliance packaging helps your facility address medication waste pollution.
Read More: How to Reduce Hazardous Pharmaceutical Waste With Compliance Packaging
Elevate Your Caregiving Standards with the Right Medication Packaging
Medication non-adherence has haunted the healthcare industry for far too long. Despite the advancements in medical science and the availability of effective treatments, they just won’t make a difference unless patients take them.
Multi-dose compliance medication packaging is here to address that, and the advantages are clear.
By embracing these ingenious and practical packaging systems, you not only optimize your care home’s processes, you improve your residents’ well-being and help them be more medication compliant.
As your organization gears up to adopt the latest pharmacy and healthcare innovations, remember that you’re not just investing in new technology; you’re investing in the quality of care you provide.
Streamline your care home’s operations, elevate resident experience, and embrace newfound efficiency with a robust multi-dose compliance packaging system by DosePacker.