Companies Help With Nurse Coaches and Teaching Aids
Some manufacturers are using nurse coaches to promote compliance, especially with high-cost specialty drugs. For example, McKesson Specialty, a provider of reimbursement, distribution, and clinical services for specialty drugs, runs nurse-coach programs through partnerships with manufacturers and health plans. For drugs that require self-injection, McKesson's nurses teach patients how to inject the drug, conduct monthly phone-ins, and coordinate care.
Some pharmaceutical companies are providing physicians with practicing counseling tools to help patients.
For example, a portable teaching aid from teriparatide (Forteo®), an osteoporosis drug, demonstrates to patients how bone strength and density can improve from treatment. The teaching aid is a 3-dimensional model that replicates before-and-after treatment bone biopsies from the hip of a clinical-trial patient of the drug.
A program for tazarotene (Tazorac®) is designed to encourage teens to regularly apply the acne medicine. Messages are delivered through text messages received on teens' cell phones from a mobile "buddy" who they've selected. The program offers patients a series of incentives and rewards, such as wallpapers and ringtones, the magazine reports.
David Nash comments, "All of the new methods are helpful, but there's no magic bullet and nothing substitutes for the basics: taking the time to explain to the patient why you're prescribing the medication."
Medscape Business of Medicine © 2009 Medscape, LLC
Cite this: Mark Crane. Best Ways to Deal With Noncompliant Patients - Medscape - Jun 05, 2009.
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