System and method for selecting compliance related services

• US 8,165,895 B2
• Filed: 12/18/2007
• Issued: 04/24/2012
• 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: Nadas, Gyula J., Oh, Hee K., Tebbe, Laura J., Dorfman, Steve S., White, Amanda
• Primary Examiner(s): O'Connor, Gerald J.
• Assistant Examiner(s): Patel, Neha
• Application Number:
  US11/959,242
• Publication Number:
  US 20090043608A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,589 Days
• Field of Search: 705/2, 705/3
• US Class Current: 705/2
• 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 an individual patient'"'"'s compliance with a prescribed medication therapy, the method comprising:

creating a medication management program including a plurality of services for improving patient compliance, each service designed to address one or more compliance barriers and the plurality of services including 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;

multi-dose packaging;

multi-dose-services;

multi-dose counseling;

compliance packaging;

refill reminder services;

discount medication programs;

frequent prescriber programs;

script alignment services;

or health/medication information services;

executing an intervention engine when a prescription associated with the individual patient is entered, the intervention engine determining if the individual patient is a candidate for participating in the medication management program based on rules for identifying the individual patient for the medication management program;

based on a determination made by the intervention engine that the individual patient is a candidate for participating in the medication management program, displaying a message when the individual patient picks up the medication related to the prescription that the individual patient is a candidate for participating in the medication management program;

based on a determination made by the intervention engine that the individual patient is a candidate for participating in the medication management program, storing data about the individual patient on non-transitory computer readable medium, the data corresponding to individual patient'"'"'s responses to a series of questions presented to the patient by a pharmacy employee;

executing a rules engine on a computer processor for analyzing the patient data stored on the computer readable medium to identify one or more compliance barriers facing the individual patient and selecting at least one service designed to address at least one of the one or more identified compliance barriers from the plurality of services, wherein the analyzing comprises evaluating the individual patient'"'"'s responses and the selecting comprises selecting a service based on a significance associated with one or more of the individual patient'"'"'s responses;

wherein the executing a rules engine comprises mapping questions to the services, and selecting a service according to a clinical significance of at least a portion of the individual patient'"'"'s responses to the questions mapped to the services;

offering the at least one selected service to the individual patient; and

activating the at least one selected service only if an agreement response is received from the individual patient.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising providing a response scale associated with each question whereby the individual patient may respond to the questions with a quantified response within the response scale that is related to the significance associated with the one or more of the individual patient'"'"'s responses by the individual patient.

3. The method of claim 2 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.

4. A system for identifying a compliance-related service from a medication management program, the system comprising:

a workstation implementing a web browser, the workstation disposed in a pharmacy;

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;

an intervention engine adapted to determine if the individual patient is a candidate for participating in the medication management program, the medication management program comprising a plurality of compliance-related services to be offered to an individual patient, each service designed to address one or more compliance barriers and the plurality of services including 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;

multi-dose packaging;

multi-dose-services;

multi-dose counseling;

compliance packaging;

refill reminder services;

discount medication programs;

frequent prescriber programs;

script alignment services;

or health/medication information services, based on rules for identifying the individual patient for the medication management program when a prescription associated with the individual patient is entered;

a computerized consultation manager adapted to generate content to be included in the web-based interface pages based on a determination made by the intervention engine that the individual patient is a candidate for participating in the medication management program, including a message displayed when the individual patient picks up the medication related to the prescription that the individual patient is a candidate for participating in the medication management program, a plurality of questions to be presented to the individual patient by a pharmacy employee and one or more selectable responses for storing data corresponding to the individual patient'"'"'s responses to the questions; and

a rules engine adapted to evaluate the individual patient'"'"'s responses to the questions and selecting appropriate compliance-related services to be offered to the individual patient based on a significance associated with one or more of on the patient'"'"'s responses,

wherein the rules engine is further adapted to map the questions to the services, and to select a service according to a clinical significance of at least a portion of the individual patient'"'"'s responses to the questions mapped to the services,

the consultation manager further adapted to generate controls to be included in the web-based interface pages to selectively activate one or more of the appropriate compliance-related services offered to the individual patient only if an agreement response is received from the individual patient.

5. The system of claim 4 wherein the selectable responses for recording the individual patient'"'"'s responses to the questions comprise a plurality of discrete values within a response scale that is related to the significance associated with the one or more of the individual patient'"'"'s responses by the individual patient.

6. The system of claim 5 wherein the response scale comprises a seven-point readiness ruler.

7. The system of claim 5 wherein the rules engine is configured to select one question from among a plurality of questions to which the individual patient answers with like responses on the response scale to take precedence.

8. The system of claim 4 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.

9. The system of claim 8 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 individual patient.

10. A method of identifying services from a medication management program, the method comprising:

executing an intervention engine when a prescription associated with the individual patient is entered, the intervention engine determining if the individual patient is a candidate for participating in the medication management program, the medication management program including a plurality of services to be offered to a patient for improving the individual patient'"'"'s compliance with a prescribed medication therapy, each service designed to address one or more compliance barriers and the plurality of services including 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;

multi-dose packaging;

multi-dose-services;

multi-dose counseling;

compliance packaging;

refill reminder services;

discount medication programs;

frequent prescriber programs;

script alignment services;

or health/medication information services, based on rules for identifying the individual patient for the medication management program;

based on a determination made by the intervention engine that the individual patient is a candidate for participating in the medication management program, executing a consultation manager on a medication management processing system, the consultation manager including a series of questions to be asked of the individual patient;

mapping the questions to various services;

establishing rules for ranking the questions based on the individual patient'"'"'s responses to the questions;

based on a determination made by the intervention engine that the individual patient is a candidate for participating in the medication management program, displaying a message when the individual patient picks up the medication related to the prescription that the individual patient is a candidate for participating in the medication management program and displaying the questions to be asked of the individual patient on an interface device;

based on a determination made by the intervention engine that the individual patient is a candidate for participating in the medication management program, presenting the individual patient the questions via a pharmacy employee and storing data corresponding to the individual patient'"'"'s responses to the questions via the interface device;

executing a rules engine on the medication management processing system, the rules engine ranking the questions according to the rules and the individual patient'"'"'s responses to the questions and identifying one or more services to which one or more highest-ranking questions are mapped and according to a clinical significance of at least a portion of the individual patient'"'"'s responses to the questions mapped to the services; and

displaying controls to selectively activate one or more of the appropriate compliance-related services offered to the individual patient only if an agreement response is received from the individual patient.

11. The method of claim 10 wherein the individual patient'"'"'s responses are limited to discrete responses selected from a spectrum of possible responses.

12. The method of claim 11 wherein the spectrum of possible responses comprises a seven point readiness ruler that is related to the significance associated with the one or more of the individual patient'"'"'s responses by the individual patient.

13. The method of claim 11 wherein the rules for ranking the questions based on the individual patient'"'"'s responses comprise ranking the questions according to the position of each response within the spectrum of possible responses.

14. The method of claim 11 wherein the questions are ranked according to the position of the individual patient'"'"'s responses to the questions within the spectrum of possible responses and the clinical significance of each question.

15. The method of claim 10 wherein asking the individual patient the questions comprises providing a printed questionnaire to the individual patient.

16. A system for identifying a compliance related service from a medication management program, the system comprising:

an interface adapted to present a message when the individual patient picks up the medication related to the prescription that the individual patient is a candidate for participating in the medication management program and to present a plurality of questions to be asked of the individual patient by a pharmacy employee and storing data corresponding to the individual patient responses thereto; and

a computer processor executing;

an intervention engine adapted to determine if the individual patient is a candidate for participating in the medication management program, comprising a plurality of compliance-related services to be offered to an individual patient for improving the individual patient'"'"'s compliance with a prescribed medication therapy, each service designed to address one or more compliance barriers and the plurality of services including 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;

multi-dose packaging;

multi-dose-services;

multi-dose counseling;

compliance packaging;

refill reminder services;

discount medication programs;

frequent prescriber programs;

script alignment services;

or health/medication information services, based on rules for identifying the individual patient for the medication management program when a prescription associated with the individual patient is entered; and

a rules engine adapted to map individual questions to specific compliance related services, the rules engine further adapted to evaluate the individual patient'"'"'s responses to the questions presented by a pharmacy employee based on a determination made by the intervention engine that the individual patient is a candidate for participating in the medication management program, rank the questions according to the individual patient'"'"'s responses, and select a service to which a highest ranking question is mapped and according to a clinical significance of at least a portion of the individual patient'"'"'s responses to the questions mapped to the services,

the interface further adapted to present controls to selectively activate one or more of the appropriate compliance related services offered to the individual patient only if an agreement response is received from the individual patient.

17. The system of claim 16 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 data corresponding to the individual patient'"'"'s responses to the questions;

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

18. The system of claim 16 wherein the individual patient'"'"'s responses are limited to a plurality of discrete values within a range of values defining a response scale that is related to the significance associated with the one or more of the individual patient'"'"'s responses by the individual patient, and the rules engine ranks each question according to a discrete value assigned to the questions by the individual patient in response to each question.

19. The system of claim 18 wherein the rules engine rank questions in accordance with their clinical significance in cases in which the individual patient assigns the same discrete value from the response scale to more than one question.