SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR SELECTING COMPLIANCE RELATED SERVICES

• US 20090043608A1
• Filed: 12/18/2007
• Published: 02/12/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 08/07/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Walgreen Co. (Walgreens Boots Alliance Incorporated)
• Original Assignee: Walgreen Co. (Walgreens Boots Alliance Incorporated)
• Inventors: White, Amanda, Tebbe, Laura J., Dorfman, Steve S., Oh, Hee K., Nadas, Gyula J.
• Granted Patent: US 8,165,895 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/3
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06311 Scheduling, planning or task assignment for a person or group
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/063114 Status monitoring or status determination for a person or group
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06315 Needs-based resource requirements planning or analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/1097 Task assignment
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0201 Market modelling; Market analysis; Collecting market data
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0205 Location or geographical consideration
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/00 Information and communication technology [ICT] specially adapted for implementation of business processes of specific business sectors, e.g. utilities or tourism healthcare informatics G16H
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 10/20 for electronic clinical trials or questionnaires
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 10/60 for patient-specific data, e.g. for electronic patient records
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 15/00 ICT specially adapted for medical reports, e.g. generation or transmission thereof
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 20/10 relating to drugs or medications, e.g. for ensuring correct administration to patients

Abstract

A comprehensive medication management system is disclosed. The comprehensive medication management system offers a number of compliance related services that may be offered to patients in to improve medication therapy compliance. The system identifies compliance barriers facing individual patents and recommends services designed to overcome those barriers. The system further provides feedback to patients to document their progress. The system proactively identifies patients who may benefit from compliance services and blocks their transactions until the services are explained. The point of sale block may be expanded to other classes of patients so that the transactions of other classes of patients blocked and other messages delivered or some other customized interactions carried out. The medication management system may serve as a central repository of information about a patient'"'"'s medication treatment program and the medication management system may provide quick and easy access to a patient'"'"'s entire medication history to facilitate consultations between a pharmacist and the patient. The medication management system may generate lists of tasks for pharmacists to perform in order to deliver the compliance related services to individual patients.

Claims

1. A method for improving a patient'"'"'s compliance with a prescribed medication therapy, the method comprising:

creating a plurality of services for improving patient compliance, each service designed to address one or more compliance barriers;

identifying one or more compliance barriers facing the patient;

selecting a service designed to address at least one of the one or more identified compliance barriers from the plurality of services; and

providing the selected service to the patient.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the plurality of services includes at least one of:

automatic prescription refills for maintenance medications;

patient-pharmacist consultation services;

customized dose charts;

express payment services;

pill box services;

pill box counseling;

compliance packaging;

refill reminder services;

discount medication programs;

frequent prescriber programs;

script alignment services;

or health/medication information services.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein identifying a compliance barrier facing the patient comprises asking the patient a series of questions and recording the patient'"'"'s responses to the questions.

4. The method of claim 3 wherein selecting a service comprises evaluating the patient'"'"'s responses to the questions and selecting a service based on the patient'"'"'s responses.

5. The method of claim 3 further comprising providing a response scale associated with each question whereby the patient may respond to the questions with a quantified response within the response scale.

6. The method of claim 5 wherein the response scale comprises a seven-point readiness ruler in which a response of 1 signifies a negligible compliance barrier and a response of 7 signifies a significant compliance barrier and responses between 1 and 7 signify a proportional compliance barrier along the scale from 1 to 7.

7. The method of claim 3 further comprising:

mapping questions to services;

applying rules for ranking questions according to the patient'"'"'s responses; and

selecting a service to which a highest ranked question is mapped.

8. A system for identifying a compliance-related service to be offered to a patient, the system comprising:

a workstation implementing a web browser;

a web server adapted to send web-based interface pages to the workstation over a network, the web-based interface pages adapted to be displayed by the workstation web browser to provide a user interface;

a consultation manager adapted to generate content to be included in the web-based interface pages, including a plurality of questions to be presented to the patient and one or more selectable responses for recording the patient'"'"'s responses to the questions; and

a rules engine adapted to evaluate the patient'"'"'s responses to the questions and selecting appropriate compliance-related services to be offered to the patient-based on the patient'"'"'s responses.

9. The system of claim 8 wherein the selectable responses for recording the patient'"'"'s responses to the questions comprise a plurality of discrete values within a response scale.

10. The system of claim 9 wherein the response scale comprises a seven-point readiness ruler.

11. The system of claim 9 wherein the rules engine is configured to map questions to services based on the patient'"'"'s responses.

12. The system of claim 11 wherein the rules engine is configured to identify a question having a highest patient response on the response scale, and select a service to which the identified question is mapped.

13. The system of claim 12 wherein the rules engine is configured to implement a tie-break procedure when a patient answers multiple questions with like responses on the response scale.

14. The system of claim 8 wherein the web-based interface pages comprising the user interface include a user interface page listing the compliance-related services selected by the rules engine.

15. The system of claim 14 wherein the user interface page listing the compliance-related services selected by the rules engine includes provisions for implementing the selected services on behalf of the patient.

16. A method of identifying services to be offered to a patient for improving the patient'"'"'s compliance with a prescribed medication therapy, the method comprising:

formulating a series of questions to be asked of the patient;

mapping the questions to various services;

establishing rules for ranking the questions based on patient responses to the questions;

asking the patient the questions and receiving the patient'"'"'s responses to the questions;

ranking the questions according to the rules; and

identifying one or more services to which one or more highest-ranking questions are mapped.

17. The method of claim 16 wherein the patient'"'"'s responses are limited to discrete responses selected from a spectrum of possible responses.

18. The method of claim 17 wherein the spectrum of possible responses comprises a seven point readiness ruler.

19. The method of claim 17 wherein the rules for ranking the questions based on the patient'"'"'s responses comprise ranking the questions according to the position of each response within the spectrum of possible responses.

20. The method of claim 17 wherein the rules for ranking the questions based on the patient'"'"'s responses include assigning a clinical significance to each question, and wherein the questions are ranked according to the position of the patient'"'"'s responses to the questions within the spectrum of possible responses and the clinical significance of each question.

21. The method of claim 16 wherein asking the patient the questions comprises providing a printed questionnaire to the patient.

22. A system for identifying a compliance related service to be offered to a patient for improving the patient'"'"'s compliance with a prescribed medication therapy, the system comprising:

an interface adapted to present a plurality of questions to be asked of the patient and recording patient responses thereto; and

a processor executing a rules engine adapted to map individual questions to specific compliance related services, the rules engine further adapted to evaluate patient responses to the questions, rank the questions according to the patient responses, and select a service to which a highest ranking question is mapped.

23. The system of claim 22 wherein the interface comprises at least one of a web-enabled workstation adapted to receive interface pages over a network and including a display for displaying the plurality of questions and an input device for entering patient responses to the questions;

or a printed document including the questions and on which the patient may record responses to the questions.

24. The system of claim 22 wherein patient responses are limited to a plurality of discrete values within a range of values defining the response scale, and the rules engine ranks each question according to a discrete value assigned to the questions by the patient in response to each question.

25. The system of claim 24 wherein the rules engine is further adapted assign a clinical significance to each question and rank questions in accordance with their clinical significance in cases in which the patient assigns the same discrete value from the response scale to more than one question.