AmeliaTek Medication Compliance

Effective January 1, 2007, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, will increase the reimbursement paid to physicians for the time they spend talking with Medicare patients, evaluating their health, and advising them on preventative care measures. According to a recent statement from CMS, “The hallmark of this rule is a stronger emphasis on the physician-patient relationship.”

That’s great news! Based on the old idea that prevention is worth more than a cure. Can we influence the doctors prescribing medications to spend some of that talk time discussing compliance, and how patients can manage the often complex and cumbersome medication schedules? Convenience technologies like OnCellRx and OnTimeRx are very low cost and work with existing cell phones and personal devices, yet patients need to be introduced to them.

Here’s another idea. A medication reminder service like OnCellRx.com would cost less than 25 cents per day for a patient taking an expensive once-a-day cholesterol control tablet. That’s a fraction of the cost of the pill. Could Big Pharma find a way to bring the OnCellRx technology to the patients to help ensure the medication is taken so it can be effective? Sounds to me like a great idea. What do you think?

ref: http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/061206/sfw011.html?.v=82