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Pre-Dispense™ will eliminate the hassle of waiting in long queues to collect chronic medication.
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Health care services company, Health Window™ - a resident at The Innovation Hub - has launched their innovative Pre-Dispense™ reminder service aimed at increasing levels of compliance and persistence among patients on chronic medication. The service will be available in 50 Clicks Pharmacies across Gauteng.
According to Health Window's Managing Member, Cassie Schutte, the model on which the service is built was designed with the patient in mind. It employs a unique funding structure which provides patients with all of the benefits of an intelligent value-adding reminder service without any of the costs. With the pharmaceutical company that manufactures the drugs and dispensing pharmacy each funding a portion of the extra cost, the service is available to the patient free of charge.
Although the service is provided on behalf of the individual pharmacy, Health Window™ covers the operational costs related to infrastructure, provision of trained staff and telecommunications, with the pharmacy only contributing a minor portion of the cost.
All reminder phone calls are conducted by trained pharmacist assistants located at the Health Window™ call centre at The Innovation Hub. The system even offers electronic reminders via SMS and operates on the basis of daily data feeds from the pharmacy which can confirm whether a dispense has occurred as well as predict when a patient needs to be contacted again.
Schutte says that despite its novel functionality, the key to the success of Pre-Dispense™ is not the system itself, but the way in which patients are managed. "Our focus is on managing patients intelligently to provide a service that is not an irritation, but a value-add. A lot of our competitors have been flawed in that their services have the effect of being intrusive", he says.
Schutte also adds that the far-reaching benefits of Pre-Dispense™ are well-supported by quantitative evidence. An example is the increase in levels of persistence (period of time that patients persistently continue to take their medication) achieved on a certain cholesterol drug that - following the intervention of Health Window's patient management system - doubled from an average of four months to eight months.
With an increase in drug dispenses that averages over 28%, the Health Window patient management system compares to the best in the world in terms of results. Schutte says that Health Window expects the system, which currently services 12 000 patients, to roll out to over 18 000 patients within the next year. As testimony to its efficiency, Clicks has now also granted Health Window the exclusive contract to provide their reminder service to all Clicks Pharmacy patients across the country.
For more information on the Health Window patient management service, contact Cassie Schutte on +27 82 903 3647, or visit the website.
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