You have probably heard the old sports adage “Offense wins games, but defense wins championships.”

This can be applied to pharmacy as well. Pharmacies need to have offensive and defensive strategies or what could also be called proactive and reactive strategies.

Let’s first look at the defensive or reactive strategies. Defense exists to stop or at least slow down whomever or whatever the opposing team is trying to do. In the world of performance contracts, let’s look specifically at the team of non-adherence. Non-adherence to three classes of medication: cholesterol (statins), renin-angiotensin system antagonists (RASA), and non-insulin antidiabetic products.

So, our defensive strategy is to get non-adherent patients back on the adherent side of life!

How do we do that?

By bringing EQuIPP™ on the field.

Within EQuIPP™, you will find with each measure that you have a button titled OUTLIERS. If you are part of a performance program, you may also have an OUTLIERS button available under the “My Programs” tab.

When you click on the OUTLIERS button, you will see a list of patients with personal adherence scores. Their scores should be in grey – showing they are non-adherent.

This is a key advantage for you. This list shows you who has been non-adherent in the past. It is also very possible that this list of patients will be non-adherent in the future. This will lower your overall score and could impact your performance contracts if they continue to be non-adherent.

By targeting these patients, you can address adherence and help the patient resolve a plethora of adherence issues. The best solutions are to work with your patients individually.

Let’s also look at how “offense wins games.”

In the same way that defense is reactive, I want to encourage you to look at offense as being proactive.

Depending on your pharmacy set up, you may have a number of different proactive tools that you use to provide care and service to the patients you serve. Automated refills and refill synchronization are two of the best-known proactive services in the industry. In many cases these proactive services are tied heavily to technology, but that isn’t always true.

Proactive solutions don’t have to be high tech. In fact, here are some low tech examples.

• Baskets
• Calendars
• Notebooks
• Stickers
• Clothespins

These are all things that you likely have at your fingertips that put you at the top of your game.

These items can be used as reminder tools for you the pharmacist to reconnect with your patients. When you are more proactive in providing care to your patients and customers, and when you are being proactive to ensure that they are being adherent, that’s when you will find you will have fewer outliers.

You will find that you have less defense to play.

You will find that you have less to react to.

You may also find that driving adherence offensively can improve the quality of medication use and positively impact the health of your patients in your community.

That’s the big win and a game worth playing.

Don’t forget to log in to EQuIPP™ today!